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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.:Q___. Copyright No. 

Shelf___,W_5 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






Church Folks 



Church Folks 



BEING PRACTICAL STUDIES 
IN CONGREGATIONAL LIFE 



By 

"Ian MAgLAREN" 

(Dr. John Watson) 

AUTHOR OF " BESIDE THE BONNIE BRIER BUSH," 
"THE MIND OF THE MASTER,'* "THE CURE OF SOULS," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO, 

1900 



1 



61844 

■ 1 1^— — ■ i — 
U>r»ry of Conor ••• 

Iwo Cums RlC£t*EO 

OCT 16 1900 
O 




StCMtP COPY 
[oC T^ 30 1900 




Copyright, 1899, 1 9°°i 
by the Curtis Publishing Company 



Copyright, 1900, 
by Doubleday, Page & Company 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

i. How to Make the Most of a Sermon, 1 
ii. How to Make the Most of Your 

Minister, 19 

in. The Candy-Pull System in the 

Church, 37 



rv. The Mutineer in the Church, . . 

v. Should the Old Clergyman Be Shot' 

vi. The Minister and the Organ, . . 

vii. The Pew and the Man in it, . . 

Vin. The Genteel Tramps in Our Church 

es, 

ix. Is the Minister an Idler? . . . 

x. The Minister and His Vacation, . 

xi. The Revival of a Minister, . . . 



54 
71 

88 
109 

126 
145 
165 
186 



Church Folks. 



How to Make the Most of a See- 

MON, 

Unto the success of a sermon two 
people contribute, and without their 
joint efforts the sermon must be a fail- 
ure. One is the preacher and the other 
is the hearer, and if some art goes to the 
composition of the sermon, almost as 
much goes to its reception. 

In the art of the hearer the first 
canon is practice, for it is a fact that 
the regular attendant not only hears 
more but also hears better than the per- 
son who drops into church once in two 



2 Church Folks 

months. Eo doubt if the preacher has 
lungs of brass, and the hearer is not 
stone deaf, a casual can catch every 
word on the rare occasion when he at- 
tends, although for the past six weeks 
he has worshipped at home or made the 
round of the neighboring churches. 
There is some difference, however, be- 
tween a steam whistle which commands 
its audience within a given area with- 
out distinction, and a musical instru- 
ment to which ears must be attuned for 
its appreciation. 

The Chief Condition of Successful 
Hearing. 

The voice of a competent speaker is 
not so much sound merely, but is so 
much music, with subtle intonations 
and delicate modulations; his pronun- 
ciation of a word is a commentary upon 
it; his look as he speaks is a translation 
of it; his severity is softened by the 



Church Folks 3 

pathos of his tone ; his praise is doubled 
by its ring of satisfaction. A stranger's 
ear is not trained to such niceties ; it is 
the habituated ear which reaps the full 
sense. 

Besides, every speaker worth hearing 
creates his own atmosphere, and one 
cannot hear with comfort until he is 
acclimatized. The speaker has his own 
standpoint, and one must be there to 
think with him; he passes every word 
through his own mint, and one must be 
familiar with the stamping. Casuals 
are puzzled by the man, but his famil- 
iar friends are at home with him. "He 
said this or that," the casual urges. 
"Oh, yes," answers the expert, "but 
with him that means something more." 
Perhaps the chief condition of success- 
ful hearing is to know the speaker, his 
working axioms, his special devotion, 
his unconscious prejudices, his charac- 
teristic message, and this knowledge can 
only be got by continual hearing. 



4 Church Folks 

When a Minister Reveals Himself. 

It is not in private that a minister 
really reveals himself; it is in the pul- 
pit. When you met him on Saturday 
upon the street he spoke of the weather 
or about a book, hiding himself , as every 
real man does, in ordinary intercourse ; 
on Sunday, without knowing, he drops 
his mask till you can read his character 
and have seen his soul. Of course, 
some men are as veiled in preaching as 
in conversation, but in that case their 
hearers have lost nothing; there is no 
individuality to reveal, only a lay figure 
beneath the conventional garments of 
the day. It takes one month of con- 
stant wear to break in a pair of heavy 
walking boots, and at least six months 
to fit into a new study chair ; a year of 
constant attendance is required to place 
one on easy terms with a preacher, and 
then the advantage must not be thrown 
away. 



Church Folks 5 

Scottish Congregations Which Ap- 
pear Asleep. 

The second canon is attention, which 
comes to this, that a hearer shall make 
his body serve his soul in church. Peo- 
ple may be listening when they sit mo- 
tionless with their eyes shut, and many 
explain that they have simply with- 
drawn themselves from a disturbing en- 
vironment, but in that case they ought 
to give some sign of life at intervals, if 
only to reassure the preacher and to 
save their neighbors from the sin of 
uncharitable judgment. There are con- 
gregations in Scotland where one-third 
of the audience appears to be asleep, but 
the preacher is afterward assured that 
these very hearers could give the best 
account of his sermon and are the keen- 
est critics of his orthodoxy. They do 
not, however, form an exhilarating spec- 
tacle for the preacher, and his tempta- 
tion will often be to say something 



6 Church Folks 

heterodox in order to compel them to 
give some sign of interest. 

If any one. on the other hand, is af- 
flicted by the evil spirit of restlessness 
which is ever impelling him to fidget 
and sometimes drives him beneath the 
book-board, then this man ought either 
to master his tormentor by practice at 
home, or he should be placed in some 
special seat where he may hear but not 
be seen. 

Audiences of Studied Negligence. 

Nor does it, in any way, assist sym- 
pathetic hearing for a man to fold his 
arms and throw himself into his seat as 
one who knows what is before him and 
will endure to the end without flinch- 
ing. A preacher may at any time refer 
to the noble army of martyrs, but he 
does not wish to address a body of mar- 
tyrs in his own church. Nothing will 
more certainly discourage a preacher, 



Church Folks 7 

till the words break on his lips and he 
can hardly maintain grammar, than an 
audience in every attitude of studied 
negligence, and nothing will more cer- 
tainly inspire him than one unbroken 
expanse of intelligent faces. 

When a Sermon Can be Heard 
Aright. 

Next comes concentration, and here 
the trained hearer has an enormous 
advantage. If it be difficult for some 
people to listen, it is ten times harder 
for other people to follow, for it is evi- 
dent a person may listen and not follow. 
Very few are accustomed to think about 
the same thing, or, indeed, to think 
about anything, for thirty minutes; 
after a brief space their interest flags 
and they fall behind ; they have long 
ago lost the thread of the preacher's ar- 
gument and have almost forgotten his 
subject. The sermon which suits such 



8 Church Folks 

a desultory mind is one of twenty para- 
graphs, each paragraph an anecdote or 
an illustration or a startling idea, so 
that wherever the hearer joins in he can 
be instantly at home. Sensible people 
ought, however, to remember that a 
series of amusing lantern-slides and a 
work of severe art are not the same, and 
if any one is to expound the gospel of 
Christ worthily he must reason as he 
goes and ask his hearers to think. The 
chain may be of gold, but there ought to 
be links securely fastened together, and 
a hearer should try them as they pass 
through his hands. If one does not 
brace himself for the effort of hearing 
a sermon he will almost certainly finish 
up by complaining either that the 
preacher was dull or that the discourse 
was disconnected. ~No sermon is worth 
hearing into which the preacher has not 
put his whole strength, and no sermon 
can be heard aright unless the hearer 
gives his whole strength also. 



Church Folks 9 

What a Preacher is Entitled to. 

My fourth canon of successful listen- 
ing is candor, and a preacher is entitled 
to ask this quality of his hearer. If a 
juryman enters the box with his mind 
made up regarding the case, then it is 
vain for any counsel to speak, and there 
is no hope of securing a just verdict. 
If a person enters church with hope- 
less prejudices in the matter of truth, 
then it does not matter how able or how 
eloquent the preacher may be, he can- 
not get access to that hearer's mind. 
The honest hearer is one who is willing 
to consider every argument and to re- 
vise every conclusion, except, of course, 
those half dozen outstanding verities 
which no preacher of intellectual sanity 
would ever attack and which every re- 
ligious person accepts as final. There 
are, however, many sides of truth 
which a hearer may never have seen 
and many applications of truth which 



I o Church Folks 

may never have occurred to him. 
He ought to be willing to follow the 
preacher as a guide and at least to judge 
the prospect for himself: he ought to 
be willing to consider how far the 
preacher's word affects his own con- 
duct. 

Nothing stimulates a preacher and 
gives him greater confidence in ex- 
pounding truth than the assurance that 
every word which he speaks from an 
honest mind will be considered by 
honest hearers. He feels that if they 
agree with him, it will be because they 
have been convinced; if they disagree 
with him, it will be because in their 
judgment he has failed to make good 
his plea. 

The Atmosphere Killing to a 
Church. 

And the last canon is charity, which 
blesses twice — the man who preaches 



Church Folks 1 1 

and the people who hear. ISTo atmos- 
phere is so injurious to the hearer, and 
none so trying to the preacher, as petty 
criticisms and malicious interpretation. 
People ought to hear in a large and 
generous spirit, remembering that the 
preacher is a man of like frailties with 
themselves, and remembering that no 
man ought to be judged except on the 
length and breadth of his teaching. It 
is possible that one day he may be dull 
— it is a matter of the weather; it is 
possible another day that he may not 
be sweet-tempered — it is a matter of 
digestion; the hearers ought to make 
great allowances for one who has to 
work with the double instrument of a 
fickle mind and an imperfect body. 
Hearers should lay it down as a rule 
that no man ever can be equal except 
he travel on the plane of dreary com- 
monplace. 



1 2 Church Folks 

The Preacher Who is Always the 

Same. 

It is said that once a deputation from 
a vacant congregation went to hear a 
middle-aged doctor of divinity, a man 
of placid disposition and uninspired 
mind. After hearing him preach a ser- 
mon which he had prepared on the 
Monday forenoon preceding, and the 
like of which he could have prepared 
every forenoon following, they asked 
one of his congregation whether that 
was a fair specimen of the doctor's 
preaching. a Ye may," he said, " depend 
on that ; hear him once ye hear him 
ever; he's aye the same; there are no 
ups and downs with the doctor." Cer- 
tainly he never descended below the 
even road of bare common sense, and 
certainly he never ascended to the 
heights of inspiration. Many preachers 
find that every fourth or fifth Sunday, 
as the case may be, they fail, beating 



Church Folks 1 3 

the ground with their wings, and not 
being able to rise. Their congregations 
will receive ample compensation on the 
Sunday following, and they will enjoy 
the top of the mountain, with its far 
view and breezy atmosphere, all the 
more on account of the valley wherein 
they walked and were shut in. 

The Cruelest Act of the Pew. 

One of the cruelest acts of injustice 
on the part of the pew is to suspect the 
preacher of personality and to read 
unthought-of meanings into his words. 
Should a preacher describe with much 
minuteness of detail and a certain 
keenness of feeling any particular sin, 
his hearers ought to be certain that he 
is describing his own sin, for, indeed, 
no man knows any sin as he knows his 
own. 

It is best for the hearer to believe 
that the preacher is moved simply in 
everything he says by loyalty to truth 



14 Church Folks 

and by the love of his fellow-men, and 
that no one regrets so bitterly as he 
does any shortcoming in exposition or 
any defect in the spirit of his teaching. 
His desire is to convince and to com- 
fort; his one reward the spiritual help 
which he affords to the souls of his 
fellow-men. If by his words any brother 
man is strengthened to do his work with 
more faithfulness during the week, or 
is succored amid the trials of life, then 
he has not failed in his calling and does 
not regret his sacrifices. His endeavor 
is the highest known in human life and 
his labor is the hardest. Unto him 
therefore should be extended the utmost 
sympathy, and for him there should be 
offered the most constant and earnest 
prayer. 

Listening Without Practice K"o 

Use. 

Xo hearer has given a preacher a fair 
chance if he forgets what has been said 



Church Folks 1 5 

at the church door, or if he treats a 
sermon as an essay to be discussed. The 
church is not a place of recreation nor 
a debating society : it is a school, where 
the chief lesson of knowledge is taught 
— how to live. The instructions are 
given from the pulpit; the demonstra- 
tion must be made at home. Above all 
religions, Christianity is experimental 
and practical — a set not of rules, but 
of principles which must be wrought 
out in the details of each man's life. 
That preacher has understood his duty 
and done it who moves a man to action, 
and that hearer has made the utmost 
of a sermon who has proved it in prac- 
tice. It is not necessary that the 
preacher be didactic, saying as to chil- 
dren, " You must do this or that/' 
which is insufferable and ineffectual. 
The best preachers are suggestive, mak- 
ing men ashamed of low living by the 
exposure of sin, and moving men to 
nobility by exhibiting the beauty of 



1 6 Church Folks 

virtue. The honest hearer does not do 
good afterward because he was told, but 
because he must. He has opened his 
heart to the message of truth as soft 
spring soil for the seed, and in this 
hospitable home the seed springs up. 

The Chief End of Every Sermon. 

Above all things, the Christian 
preacher makes two demands, and both 
can be justified only by the obedience 
of the hearer. He invites his audience 
to become disciples and servants of 
Jesus; he magnifies the Master's grace 
and power; he assures his fellow-men 
that to trust in Jesus and to follow Him 
is to live. If the hearer argues and 
debates about Jesus, he can never arrive 
at the facts, and he has not dealt fairly 
with the preacher. Let him put the 
matter to the test and make the adven- 
ture with Jesus as did the first Chris- 
tians. If he does, then he will be able 
to judge the preacher; if not, he ought 



Church Folks 1 7 

to be silent. Never has there been more 
futile criticism than that of hearers who 
will not believe: such people wander 
round the outside of the cathedral and 
discuss the painted glass, which can 
only be understood from the inside. 
Another appeal of the Christian 
preacher is for sacrifice, and it is his 
duty to magnify the glory of unselfish 
living. He asks people to do what is 
hard and unattractive, and promises 
them a gain which is spiritual and 
unseen. It lies upon the hearer to 
verify this commandment for himself, 
and to find out whether serving others, 
and not one's self, does make one hap- 
pier and stronger. 

The chief end of preaching is, after 
all, inspiration, and the man who has 
been set on fire is the vindication of the 
pulpit. The chief disaster of preaching 
is detachment and indifference. Never 
was any sermon so poor and thin but it 
contained more than its hearers could 



1 8 Church Folks 

practise. ]STo sermon has failed which 
has sent one man away richer by a 
single thought, or stirred to a single 
brave deed. 



II 



How to Make the Most of Your 
Minister. 

Between a minister and his congre- 
gation there is an action and a reaction, 
so that the minister makes the congrega- 
tion, and the congregation makes the 
minister. When one speaks of a minis- 
ter's service to his people, one is not 
thinking of pew rents and offertories 
and statistics and crowds, nor of schools 
and guilds and classes and lectures. 
The master achievement of the minister 
is to form character and to make men. 
The chief question, therefore, to con- 
sider about a minister's work is: What 
kind of men has he made ? 



20 Church Folks 

And one, at least, of the most decisive 
questions by which the members of a 
congregation can be judged is: What 
have they made of their minister ? By 
that one does not mean what salary they 
may give him nor how agreeable they 
may be to him, but how far he has be- 
come a man and risen to his height in 
the atmosphere of his congregation. 
Some congregations have ruined minis- 
ters by harassing them till they lost 
heart and self-control, and became pee- 
vish and ill-tempered. Some congrega- 
tions, again, have ruined ministers by 
so humoring and petting them that they 
could endure no contradiction, and be- 
came childish. That congregation has 
done its duty most effectively which has 
created an atmosphere so genial, and 
yet so bracing, that every good in its 
minister has been fostered and every- 
thing petty killed. 



Church Folks 2 1 

What the Congregation Must Do. 

A young minister is a charge com- 
mitted to a congregation, and its first 
duty is patience, especially with his 
preaching. One extremely young, and, 
what is not the same thing, very imma- 
ture, minister began life as assistant in 
a city church famous for its activity and 
earnestness. His work was to visit sick 
people and to attend to details, and, 
wisely, he was seldom asked to preach. 
When he did preach his sermon was 
a very boyish performance indeed — 
shallow, rhetorical, unpractical — and 
he had sense enough to be ashamed. By 
and by he was appointed, for accidental 
and personal reasons, to a church of his 
own in a remote country district. Be- 
fore he left the big city church, one of 
the elders called to bid him farewell. 
He said he felt that it was only right 
to point out where the assistant had 
succeeded and where he had failed. 



22 Church Folks 

" You have been very attentive to the 
invalids and — er — the children, and I 
may say without flattery that you have 
been well liked, but you know that God 
has not given you the power of public 
speech. I am afraid you will never 
be able to preach. Still, you may have 
much usefulness and blessing as a pas- 
tor." 

It was not a cheering prospect to 
wait on old ladies and attend Sunday- 
school treats, but the lad thanked the 
candid elder with a sinking heart, and 
went to his new work. 

What One Man Did for His 
Minister. 

His first experiences in the new 
parish seemed to confirm the pessimistic 
prophecy. One day he forgot every- 
thing in the middle of his sermon; 
another day, in expounding an epistle 
of Saint Paul, he had got his thoughts 



Church Folks 23 

into such a tangled skein that he had 
to begin again and repeat half his ex- 
position. On that occasion the young 
minister was so utterly disheartened 
that he formed a hasty resolution in the 
pulpit to retire, and went into the 
vestry in the lowest spirits. There an 
old Highland elder was awaiting him 
to take him by the hand and to thank 
him for " an eloquent discourse." 

" It is wonderful/' he said in his 
soft, .kindly accent, " that you are 
preaching so well, and you so young, 
and I am wanting to say that if you 
ever forget a head of your discourse, 
you are not to be putting yourself about. 
You will just give out a Psalm and be 
taking a rest, and maybe it will be 
coming back to you. We all have plenty 
of time, and we all will be liking you 
very much. The people are saying 
what a good preacher you are going to 
be soon, and they are already very 
proud of you." 



24 Church Folks 

IText Sunday the minister entered 
the pulpit with a confident heart, and 
was sustained by the buoyant atmos- 
phere of friendliness; and as a conse- 
quence he did not hesitate nor forget, 
nor has he required since that day to 
begin again. Little wonder that his 
heart goes back from a city to that 
Highland parish with affection and 
gratitude ; had it not been for the char- 
ity of his first people he would not now 
be in the ministry. 

A Congregation Must Stand by its 
Minister. 

The members of a congregation are 
bound to stand by their minister in the 
outer world. He is their own, and they 
ought to be jealous of his good name. 
If he savs or does what is less than 
right, let them tell him face to face in 
all tenderness and love; but if strang- 
ers criticise him, let his people defend 



Church Folks 25 

and praise. If a man's own household 
is loyal, then he is not cast down by the 
hostility of the man on the street. 
When it turns against him he loses 
heart. Nothing will teach a proper man 
to judge himself more severely or to 
realize his faults more distinctly than 
the discovery that his critics in private 
are his advocates in public. 

It happened once that a leading 
member of a congregation considered 
it his duty to remonstrate with his 
minister, to whom he was deeply at- 
tached, because the minister's preach- 
ing had grown hard and unspiritual. 
They were personal friends, and the 
conversation was conducted with per- 
fect taste and temper ; but the minister 
did feel a little sore afterwards, which 
was rather foolish, and he worried him- 
self with the idea that his friends and 
his congregation were turning against 
him. A few days afterward a brother 
minister called upon him, and as they 



26 Church Folks 

talked of one thing and another his 
visitor congratulated him on the attach- 
ment of his people. " Why, last night 
at a dinner-table old Doctor Sardine 
was carping at your preaching — calling 
you a rationalist, and so forth — when 
Mr. Cochrane spoke out at once and 
told the old gentleman that he did not 
know what he was talking about. i I go 
to his church/ said your man, ' and I 
know that I can never repay my minis- 
ter all that he has done for me and 
mine/ It was straight talk, and pro- 
duced an immense impression, and one 
minister envied you such a friend." 

Nothing Helps a Minister Like 
Confidence. 

While his friend had told him his 
faults boldly, man to man, and he had 
taken private offence, like a foolish 
child, that friend had been guarding 
his reputation with generous enthusi- 



Church Folks 27 

asm, and at the thought thereof he was 
moved to repentance. The judgment 
of his friend received a new weight, 
being sanctioned by such pledges of 
sincerity and magnanimity. So it came 
to pass in the end that the minister 
reconsidered his position and realized 
that he had fallen into extremes. Noth- 
ing has a more wholesome effect on a 
high-spirited man than the sense that 
a number of people trust him and guard 
him, and are ready to stand or fall with 
him. This confidence inspires him 
with humility, tones down his pride, 
teaches him caution, and lavs on him 
the responsibility of carrying himself 
well in the conflict of life. 

A wise congregation will also respond 
to the highest which the minister gives, 
and will discriminate between the sec- 
ond-rate and first-rate product of his 
brain. There is such a thing as a cheap 
sermon, which may be very popular 
and showy, with a shallow cleverness. 



28 Church Folks 

Bright men are often tempted to preach 
such sermons because they are easily- 
thrown off, and do not strain the soul. 
And a congregation is apt to welcome 
such sermons because they demand little 
attention. 

Congregations Must Listen with 
their Soites. 

There is such a thing as a dear ser- 
mon, which has cost a man agony of 
brain and heart — a sermon charged 
with thought and passion. Such ser- 
mons are not lightly prepared nor can 
they be lightly heard. As the preacher 
has put his soul into his work, so the 
people must put their souls into the 
hearing. Of course, a strong man will 
not cease to put forth his hardest, 
choicest work, although no one approves, 
and he will not fall beneath his best in 
any circumstances; but the desire for 
cheap and popular preaching puts a 



Church Folks 29 

heavy strain on the resolution of an 
ordinary minister until he is sometimes 
tempted to please the foolish people in 
his congregation, and to lighten his own 
burden by giving them less than his 
best. And it is the saddest of all ironies 
in church life when a man succeeds, as 
far as outside appearances go, who has 
buried his talents, and a congregation 
is happy and apparently satisfied which 
has wasted its minister. 

If a minister be inspired by high 
ideals and has an iron will, he will 
fulfil himself in spite of the most de- 
bilitating circumstances, and although 
his people clamor for cheap cleverness, 
he will insist on feeding them with the 
finest of the wheat. Many worthy men, 
however, are neither particularly strong 
nor spiritual, and if their people have 
no appetite for strong meat, they will 
satisfy them with the poorest of all 
claptrap — the claptrap of religion. It 
may be evangelistic verbiage or social 



30 Church Folks 

rant or rationalistic cant, but it is the 
by-product of the man's mind, and 
worse than worthless to the members 
of his church. 



The Minister Must Lead His 
People. 

The minister should be given to 
understand that his congregation ex- 
pects to share in the ripest knowledge 
he possesses, and will appreciate his 
most careful thinking. When he rises 
to his height on any occasion and 
preaches a great sermon it does not 
matter whether every person has under- 
stood every word or some of them only 
about one-half. He ought to be told 
that all the members of his church are 
proud of him and thank God for him, 
and that even if he were beyond them, 
this was not because of obscurity, but 
because of elevation, and that they are 
pleased to have a minister who lives at 



Church Folks 3 1 

such a level. He must not come down 
to them, but they must strive to rise to 
him. It is a miserable business for 
a preacher to repeat the commonplaces 
of his people in a showy form so that 
the man in the street goes home con- 
gratulating himself because he has 
heard his paltry ideas tricked out in 
a showy dress. It is the function of the 
prophet to lead his flock onward, even 
though the march be sometimes through 
the wilderness, and they ought to follow 
close behind him and tell him that they 
are there, and that thev will not cease 
to follow till he has brought them into 
the fulness of the Land of Promise. 
Under those conditions a man will feel 
bound to read the best books and to 
think out every subject to its very 
heart ; he will grudge no labor of brain, 
no emotion of soul, to meet the expecta- 
tion of a thoughtful, broad-minded 
people, and if he come at last to be 
a leader of thought whose words fly far 



32 Church Folks 

and wide, then to this congregation will 
the credit be due who believed in him 
and demanded great things of him and 
made more of him than he, in his most 
ambitious moment, could have imag- 
ined. 



Ministers !Need Constant Encour- 
agement. 

It is also the duty of the members of 
a congregation to encourage their minis- 
ter, and they would take more trouble 
to do so if they only knew how much 
he needed their encouragement, and how 
much he would thrive upon it. They 
must have a strong imagination in order 
to understand the trials of his lot, which 
are different from those of every other 
worker, because he has to work by faith 
and not bv sight. As he sits in his 
study and at midday has not written 
a line because his thoughts would not 
flow, or when he burns four hours' work 



Church Folks 3 3 

because it is worthless, the minister 
looks out and envies a workman who, 
across the street, has completed in the 
same time so many feet of brickwork 
which is as good as it could be, and will 
last for many a year. As he visits the 
sick of his flock, anxiously looking for 
some sign that his words of comfort and 
advice have produced their due effect, 
he wishes he were a physician, who can 
see the good he does and has his quick 
reward in lives saved from death — in 
bodies relieved from pain. It some- 
times seems to the minister as if his 
words from week to week were wasted 
— so much water poured on the desert. 
From the very nature of the case he 
cannot discover the fruit of his minis- 
try, and therefore others should tell him 
that he has not labored in vain. People 
are quick enough to criticise a sermon 
or to dwell upon the fact that the attend- 
ance has been a little scantier of late, 
but is there nothing else they could 



34 



Church Folks 



mention to the pastor ? Has he never 
thrown light on some difficult passage 
of Scripture nor stimulated the con- 
science to the sense of some new duty 
nor sustained the heart in some sorrow 
of life ? Why should he be left in igno- 
rance who waits so wistfully for news 
which does not come and which would 
mean so much? 

O^e Letter Which Inspired a 
Sermon". 



Let me take you to the interior of 
a study where the minister is toiling 
with laboring oar and despairs of ever 
reaching land. The forenoon mail ar- 
rives and four letters are laid upon his 
table: one is uninteresting, one is tire- 
some, one is vexatious, and the dis- 
heartened man opens the fourth letter 
with a sigh. Another complaint from 
some querulous person; another detail 
laid on a weary man ! What is this ? 



Church Folks 35 

" My Dear Pastor : For some time I have 
wished to write and tell you what a help you 
have been to those who are very dear to me. 
Again and again my husband has been cheered 
and encouraged in his fight to do what is right 
in business by your brave words. He told me 
one Sunday night that nothing had done so 
much to keep him straight as your sermons. 
You know that Jack made us rather anxious 
for some time because he seemed careless and 
indifferent to home. Well, he has quite changed 
of late, and is so attentive to me and nice with 
his father. And on my birthday he brought 
me such a lovely present, for which he must 
have been saving during months. When I 
told him how grateful I was he only said : ' It 
was that sermon on sons and mothers did it.' 
And now last Sunday your sermon on care 
seemed to be written for me, for I have so little 
faith and am so anxious. So I must tell you 
that you have inspired the life of one house- 
hold and that we bless God for you. 

" Yours most gratefully, 

"May Harrison." 

It may not seem a long letter nor one 
difficult to understand, but the minister 
was not satisfied till he had read it six 
times. And although it may not seem 
a learned letter, it shed such a flood of 
light on the text that the minister's pen 



36 Church Folks 

flew. He locked that letter up in his 
desk, but found that he had forgotten 
a sentence, so it was more convenient 
to carry it in his pocket. On Sunday he 
judged it necessary to read that letter 
before going to church, and he had a 
last peep at it in the vestry. And the 
minister preached that morning with 
such power and hope that even the 
grumblers were satisfied, and the con- 
gregation went home on wings. 



III. 

The Candy-Pull System in the 
Church. 

As I write, the appeal of a Young 
Men's Christian Association to its mem- 
bers lies on the table before me, and I 
copy it verbatim: 

"Do Not Forget 

The next Social 
The next Candy-pull 
The next Entertainment 
The next Song Service 
The next Gospel Meeting 
The next Meeting of the Debating Club 
The next Chicken-pie Dinner 
The next date when you ought to make the 
secretary happy with your cash/' 

This remarkable list of operations, 
combining evangelistic zeal, creature 



3 8 Church Folks 

comforts, and business shrewdness, re- 
quires no commentary: the items give 
us a convincing illustration of an up- 
to-date religious institution — a veritable 
hustler of a T. M. C. A. 

Perhaps one department of the work 
requires a word of explanation; there 
may be some persons who have given 
considerable attention to Christian 
agencies, and yet whose researches may 
not have come across a " candy-pull." 
This agency, if that be the correct word, 
is a party of young men and women 
who meet for the purpose of pulling 
candy, and, in the case of the co- 
operation of sexes, is said to be a very 
engaging employment. It may be 
that candy-pulling on the part of a 
T. M. C A. is confined to one sex, and 
is therefore shorn of half its attraction, 
but one clings to the idea that in these 
days of " pleasant" religious evenings 
the young men would not be left to their 
own company. 



Church Folks 39 

Conducting a Church on Modern 
Lines. 

The Christian church and a 
Y. M. C. A. are, of course, very differ- 
ent institutions, and the latter is free 
from any traditions of austere dignity; 
but one is not surprised to find that the 
church has also been touched with the 
social spirit and is also doing her best to 
make religion entertaining. One enters 
what is called a place of worship and 
imagines that he is in a drawing-room. 
The floor has a thick carpet, there are 
rows of theatre chairs, a huge organ fills 
the eye, a large bouquet of flowers 
marks the minister's place ; people come 
in with a jaunty air and salute one 
another cheerily; hardly one bends his 
head in prayer ; there is a hum of gossip 
through the building. 

A man disentangles himself from 
a conversation and bustles up to the 
platform without clerical robes of any 



40 Church Folks 

kind, as likely as not in layman's dress. 
A quartette advances, and, facing the 
audience, sings an anthem to the con- 
gregation, which does not rise, and later 
they sing another anthem, also to the 
congregation. There is one prayer, and 
one reading from Holy Scripture, and 
a sermon which is brief and bright. 
Among other intimations the minister 
urges attendance at the Easter supper, 
when, as is mentioned in a paper in the 
pews, there will be oysters and meat — 
turkey, I think — and ice-cream. This 
meal is to be served in the " church 
parlor." 

As SOON AS THE BENEDICTION IS SAID. 

!NTo sooner has the benediction been 
pronounced, which has some original 
feature introduced, than the congrega- 
tion hurries to the door; but although 
no one can explain how it is managed, 
the minister is alreadv there shaking 



Church Folks 4 1 

hands, introducing people, " getting off 
good things/' and generally making 
things " hum." One person congratu- 
lates him on his " talk" — new name for 
a sermon — and another says it was 
" fine." 

Efforts have been made in England 
also to make church life really popular, 
and, in one town known to the writer, 
with some success of its own kind. One 
church secured a new set of communion 
plate by the popular device of a dance ; 
various congregations gave private 
theatricals, and one enterprising body 
had stage property of its own. Bible 
classes celebrated the conclusion of 
their session by a supper ; on Good Fri- 
days there were excursions into the 
country, accompanied by a military 
band, and a considerable portion of the 
congregational income was derived from 
social treats of various kinds. This 
particular town is only an illustration 
of the genial spirit spreading through- 



42 Church Folks 

out the church in England. One min- 
ister uses a magic lantern to give force 
to his sermon ; another has added a tav- 
ern to his church equipment; a third 
takes up the latest murder or scandal; 
a fourth has a service of song; a fifth 
depends on a gypsy or an ex-pugilist. 

If this goes on, the church will soon 
embrace a theatre and other attractions 
which will draw young people and pre- 
vent old people from wearying in the 
worship of God. 

Is the New Departure an Improve- 
ment ? 

Perhaps it may be the perversity of 
human nature which is apt to cavil at 
new things and hanker after the good 
old times — which were not always good, 
by any means — but one is not much 
enamored with the new departure nor at 
all convinced that what may be called 
for brief the "Candy-pull" system is any 



Church Folks 43 

improvement on the past. After a slight 
experience of smart preachers and 
church parlors and ice-cream suppers 
and picnics, one remembers with new 
respect and keen appreciation the min- 
ister of former days, with his seemly 
dress, his dignified manner, his sense 
of responsibility, who came from the 
secret place of Divine fellowship, and 
spoke as one carrying the message of 
the Eternal. He mav not have been so 
fussy in the aisles as his successor nor 
so clever at games nor able to make so 
fetching a speech on " Love, Courtship, 
and Marriage." 

Was the Old-Time Clergyman too 
Formal ? 

The members of his congregation 
may not have called him a " bright 
man" nor said he was " great fun" nor 
asked him so often to tea-parties, and it 
may be granted that he erred on the 



44 Church Folks 

side of formality; but, on the other 
hand, they spoke of him as a " man of 
God" and a " good man/' and in the 
straits of life and in anxiety of con- 
science they sent for him. They may 
not have liked him so well as the modern 
man, but they respected and trusted 
him, which is far more important. 

One is also struck by the change in 
the whole environment of worship, and 
there may be a difference of opinion 
whether it has been for the better or 
the worse. The church of our fathers 
was not well lighted nor scientifically 
ventilated nor elaborately cushioned, 
and all there could be seen of carpet 
was on the pulpit stairs. The church 
of to-day is amazingly decorated, and 
bright with innumerable electric lights. 

Congregations Meet to Listen to 
the Choir. 

The service of the past was musically 
imperfect and was generally too long. 



Church Folks 45 

To-day the tenor in the choir is dis- 
missed if his voice shows signs of wear, 
and the people sit in judgment on how 
the anthem has been " attacked" or 
" rendered" — perhaps it was " Holy, 
Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty" — and 
there is a notice in the vestry (or minis- 
ter's parlor) that the Scripture lesson 
must not exceed fifteen verses — ten is 
preferred — and the prayers must not 
encroach on the music, and the sermon, 
whatever be its subject, even though it 
be the Judgment Day, must be " inter- 
esting." In the former time a congrega- 
tion used to speak of a sermon as 
" edifying" or " searching" or " com- 
forting." ISTow it declares that the 
preacher was in " great form," or it 
complains that he was " off color." 

There are, no doubt, many points in 
w T hich the congregation of the present 
has advanced on the congregation of the 
past, but it has not been all gain, for 
the chief note in the worship of the 



46 Church Folks 

former generation was reverence — 
people met in the presence of the 
Eternal, before whom every man is less 
than nothing. And the chief note of 
their children, who meet to listen to a 
choir and a clever platform speaker, is 
self-complacency. 

Fear of God Seems to Have 
Departed. 

It ought to be granted that one reason 
for this change in the spirit of con- 
gregational life is a reaction from 
individualism and a new conception of 
the fellowship of the Christian church. 
A religious person no longer thinks of 
himself as a solitary unit, isolated from 
every other human being in the world, 
and whose chief business in life is to 
save his own soul. He has realized that 
his life is bound up with that of his 
neighbors, and that he is a member of 
a society which extends over all the 



Church Folks 47 

world; that he must not deny his 
humanity, and that in saving others he 
is also saving himself. The world is 
no longer a wilderness through which 
he marches a pilgrim and stranger, but 
his birthplace, to which he owes a duty, 
and religion is not so much an austere 
devotion to God as it is a useful, chari- 
table life. 

The centre of thought has, in fact, 
shifted from eternity to time, from the 
worship of God to the service of men. 
The one idea was enshrined in a Puri- 
tan meeting, where each man waited in 
wistful expectation for a sign of favor 
from the Almighty, or in the cathedral 
where the multitude bowed in silent 
adoration at the lifting of the Host. 
The other idea is visible in the building, 
more concert-room than church, where 
a number of good people meet in high 
spirits and in kindly fellowship to move 
one another to good works, and to sing 
hymns. The ancient fear of God seems 



48 Church Folks 

to have departed entirely, and with it 
the sense of the unseen, which once 
constituted the spirit of worship. 

The Up-to-Date Church Needs an 
Annex. 

Religion, it is urged with consider- 
able force, must provide not only for 
the soul, but also for the mind and body, 
so that a Christian will not need to go 
outside the church for culture or 
amusement. If he want relaxation, 
entertainments must be provided for 
him at his church, so that he need not go 
into worldly society; and whatever be 
his intellectual taste, it must be met in 
his ecclesiastical home. His literary 
and debating society and drawing-room 
and concert must be all under one roof, 
so that the young Christian may be 
sheltered from temptation. 

As this social tendency of the congre- 
gation is becoming more marked every 



Church Folks 49 

year, and new inventions are being 
added, it is vain to urge a return to the 
simplicity of the past, when a congre- 
gation was a body of people who met 
to worship God and study His will; 
but it may be worth while to point to 
certain drawbacks in the new develop- 
ment. For one thing, if congregations 
are to become " universal providers/' 
another kind of minister will be needed. 

How the Modern Minister Pre- 
pares Himself. 

For this kind of institution a teacher 
to expound the Bible or a pastor to 
train the character of his people is 
hardly needed, and certainly he would 
not be appreciated. The chief requisite 
demanded is a sharp man, with the 
gifts of an impresario, a commercial 
traveller, and an auctioneer combined, 
with the slightest flavor of a peripatetic 
evangelist. Instead of a study lined 



50 Church Folks 

with books of grave divinity and classi- 
cal literature, let him have an office 
with pigeon-holes for his programmes 
and endless correspondence; cupboards 
for huge books, with cuttings from 
newspapers and reports of other organ- 
izations; a telephone ever tingling, and 
a set of handbooks : " How to Make 
a Sermon in Thirty Minutes," or " One 
Thousand Eacv Anecdotes from the 
Mission Field." 

Here sits an alert, vivacious, inven- 
tive manager, with his female stenog- 
rapher at a side table, turning over one 
huge book to discover who is next in 
order of time for visitation, and another 
for details of families, or hastily exam- 
ining filed speeches of public men on 
some subject to be taken on Sunday. 
From morning to night he toils, tele- 
phoning, telegraphing, dictating, com- 
piling, hurrying around, conducting 
" socials " or " bright evenings," giving 
" talks," holding receptions, an un- 



Church Folks 5 1 

wearied, adroit, persevering man. No 
one can help admiring his versatility 
and honesty of intention; but if he is 
to be the type of the minister of the 
future, then he will supersede and ex- 
clude a better man. 



Should the Pulpit be Given to 
Manageks ? 

There are men who possess every 
becoming gift of learning and insight 
and devotion and charity who are abso- 
lutely incapable of " running" a church 
on modern lines. They could guide 
a soul in spiritual peril, but they have 
no talent for amusing young people; 
they can declare the Everlasting Gospel 
of the Divine Sacrifice, but they have 
no turn for machinery; they can ex- 
pound the principles of righteousness, 
but they refuse to meddle with a recent 
strike of motormen. 
As regards the gain of the new depart- 



52 Church Folks 

ure, is it certain that the socializing of 
the Church will make her creed and life 
attractive ? If it come to be a competi- 
tion between the amusements of the 
Church (or her feasts) and the amuse- 
ments of the world (and its feasts), is 
there any sane person who thinks that 
the Church can win ? Like Csesar, the 
world offers her magnificent shows ; the 
Church, like Christ, presents the vic- 
torious Cross. 

The Church Must K"ot Leave Her 
High Place. 

Why should the Church leave her 
high place and come down into the 
arena, where she will be put to shame ? 
Do men come to church for petty pleas- 
ures fit only for children or for the 
satisfaction of their souls and the con- 
firmation of their faith ? Would Chris- 
tianity have begun to exist if the 
Apostles had been " pleasing preachers" 



Church Folks 



53 



and " bright men" and had given them- 
selves to " socials" and " sales" and 
" talks " ? The Church triumphed by 
her faith, her holiness, her courage, and 
by these high virtues she must stand in 
this age also. She is the witness to 
immortality, the spiritual home of 
souls, the servant of the poor, the pro- 
tector of the friendless ; and if she sinks 
into a place of second-rate entertain- 
ment, then it were better that her 
history should close, for without her 
spiritual visions and austere ideals the 
Church is not worth preserving. 



IV. 

The Mutineer in the Church. 

It takes all kinds of people to make 
a world, and it takes almost as many 
kinds to make a congregation, but it is 
not necessary for congregational com- 
pleteness to possess a mutineer. By a 
mutineer one means a person we can 
easily identify, and at whose hands 
most congregations have sometimes 
suffered. He is not to be confounded 
with a Christian of old-fashioned 
opinions, who is occasionally disturbed 
by a sermon on " The Fatherhood of 
God/' and will come to the minister's 
study to explain that he has always 
believed God to be a judge. This man 



Church Folks 55 

is perfectly honest, and ought to be 
treated with all consideration, because 
he is simply loyal to his hereditary 
faith, and all the time would like to 
receive the new gospel. Let him have 
a warm corner in the room, and a com- 
fortable seat, and free opportunity to 
run through as many texts as he wishes, 
and a candid hearing unto the hour of 
midnight. He is open to conviction, 
and even if he leave unconvinced, he 
will not go to set fire to the congrega- 
tion. Not he ; but he will explain every- 
where that the minister is a faithful 
Bible student and a patient pastor, and 
that it is a privilege and a responsibility 
to sit in his church. 



Do ISTot Confound Him with the 
Restless Person. 

Nor must the word be applied to one 
of those restless people who are ever 
detecting some fault in affairs and who 



56 Church Folks 

weary every person with random sug- 
gestions. One week he writes that a 
woman was turned away from the 
church prayer-meeting because the hall 
was full — the minister is always 
amused with this mythical person and 
wishes he could see her in the flesh — 
and he suggests that the weekday ser- 
vice should be held in the church. He 
knows a hundred people who would be 
willing to come — and this also pleases 
the minister very much, because the 
good man hardly ever attends himself. 
Next week some mysterious person 
informs this man that he has caught 
cold through the draught from one of 
the windows, and our friend writes 
sixteen pages to advocate window cur- 
tains, which would make St. Peter's 
itself hideous and worship impossible 
for all self-respecting people. A month 
later this same man is convinced that 
the whole congregation is a rope of 
sand, and ought to be bound up by a 



Church Folks $y 

general visitation on the part of the 
office bearers, for which he is good 
enough to sketch a plan; and every 
other week he will make a new sugges- 
tion in a voluminous letter, till his 
brethren are apt to say strong words 
about his meddlesomeness. 



Teeat the Restless Person with 
Respect. 

His brethren ought rather to possess 
their souls in patience and treat the 
worthy man kindly, for there is not 
a grain of mischief in him, nor is there 
a better-hearted man in the whole con- 
gregation. He will be quite pleased if 
he gets a civil answer, and I would 
suggest this form for such occasions : 

" Dear Mr. Jump : I have received your 
interesting letter and note your suggestion 
about the curtains. The matter is one which 
will require careful consideration, and I hasten 
to assure you that it is encouraging to the 
minister and workers of the church to find 



58 Church Folks 

that the welfare of our church in every respect 
lies so near your heart. With very warm re- 
gard, believe me, 

" Yours faithfully, 
" Job Holdfast, Pastor." 

Mr. Jump will be quite satisfied with 
this letter, and in twenty-four hours 
will have forgotten that he ever pro- 
posed curtains. It will be worth while 
for a congregation to engage, say, one 
Jump, just to note defects and to .keep 
things moving. Two Jumps might be 
too much for the congregation, and they 
had better dispose of the second. 

The Over-Sensitive Church 
Member. 

There is another person who ought 
not to be considered a mutineer, al- 
though he is very wrong-headed and 
may become a real nuisance. He is the 
man who is apt to be offended and to 
be " hurt," as he calls it, because some 
one passed him at the church door 



Church Folks 59 

without speaking, or " said things " 
about him — he knows not what — behind 
his back, or objected to some plan which 
he proposed, or refused to do something 
he asked. Having worried his wife 
about the matter, and talked himself 
into a fever of wounded vanity, he gives 
everybody to understand that he has 
a grievance, and assumes the air of a 
martyr. As a formal protest he may 
even absent himself from church for 
two Sundays, and will be still further 
hurt if no one calls to inquire the 
reason. Of course, he is very provoking, 
but there is no malice in the man, and 
he ought to be gently treated. It is his 
misfortune rather than his fault that 
he has no scarf-skin and no protection 
against the inevitable friction of life. 
A gentle touch and a liberal use of 
spiritual ointment will cure his wounds 
— or, rather, scratches. 



60 Church Folks 

How to Detect, the Genuine 
Mutineer. 

The mutineer is of another breed and 
is an able-bodied miscreant, who will 
strike a hard blow whenever he can get 
an opportunity, and at any person 
whom he can reach. His sole desire is 
to do mischief, and the more pain he 
gives the better is he pleased. He will 
write insulting letters to the minister, 
charging him with every sin from 
heresy to lying. He will get up a public 
controversy about the affairs of the con- 
gregation in any newspaper which is 
foolish enough to insert his letters. He 
will attack the most reasonable pro- 
posals of the office bearers, and impute 
to them the worst motives. He will move 
through the congregation as an incen- 
diarv, and set fire to every inflammable 
person. When he is in his glory he will 
threaten proceedings in the church 
courts or in the civil courts; and al- 



Church Folks 6 1 

though he will never carry them out, 
being a coward as well as a bully, he 
will take the preliminary steps, which 
cause talk and alarm. It will also be 
part of his role to pose as a straight- 
forward and honest man of unflinching 
rectitude and spiritual aims. What he 
does will always be under constraint of 
conscience, and he will summon himself 
and his opponents with much rhetorical 
effect before the bar of eternal justice. 
He is so big and blatant, and good 
people are so charitable and easily 
cowed, that they often take this man at 
his own value and come to terms with 
him. 

He Should Receive Little Con- 
sideration. 

As a matter of fact, he is an utter 
humbug from every point of view, and 
ought to receive no mercy. Neither his 
opinions nor his feelings nor his com- 
plaints nor his threatening^ should 



62 



Church Folks 



receive one moment's consideration. 
His first challenge should be accepted 
as a declaration of war, and the war 
had better be without quarter; and it 
is astonishing how soon this brigand 
can be brought to his senses and to 
abject submission. 

Should he be established in a con- 
gregation and have shown his hand, the 
wisest plan is to give him notice to quit. 
It is not usual to ask any member to 
leave a church, and very unusual if he 
happen to be a man of substance and 
position, as this fellow often is; but 
congregations are much too anxious to 
keep every person, and much too slow 
to recognize that some men's absence is 
more profitable than their presence. 
Their presence simply means turmoil 
and heartburnings, their absence peace 
and prosperity; their presence soon 
drives many quiet folk away; their 
absence would remove a stumbling- 
block. 




Church Folks 63 

His Influence is Always Detri- 
mental. 

Should he apply for admission to 
a church where his character is known, 
then he should be plainly refused. Why 
should any minister, if it depend on 
him, receive a man who has half -broken 
another minister's heart ? Why should 
a congregation give house room to a 
man who has reduced the affairs of an- 
other to ruin ? The chances are he has 
left like an army which has eaten up 
one country and now must go to devas- 
tate another. If there be any power 
in a congregation that can do it, let the 
door be slammed in this man's face, and 
as he wanders about churchless perhaps 
he may learn wisdom. 

Should any one say that we are treat- 
ing the mutineer unkindly and un- 
Christianly, then he is carried away by 
an excess of charity and is not facing 
the facts. To deal kindly with a muti- 



64 Church Folks 

neer is to be cruel to the minister and 
the congregation. Although he be only 
a single individual, there is no end to 
the mischief which this man can do. 
For one thing, he will gravely affect 
the preacher, and that in ways which 
the congregation can hardly imagine. 
Xo preacher who is worth the name 
writes his sermons without reference 
to his congregation, as if he were liv- 
ing in another planet and were dealing 
only with the ideas of the study. As 
he sits at the table he is really in the 
pulpit and the congregation in the 
pews; he speaks to them, and they re- 
spond; he sees one head lifted and 
another cast down, one rebuked and 
another comforted, till the books of the 
study disappear and the room is full of 
human feeling. It is in this atmosphere 
that the preacher will do his best work 
and most perfectly fulfil his mission. 
Suppose, therefore, that at the end of 
a pew — and -that is where he is certain 



Church Folks 65 

to be, in some prominent place — this 
rebel is sitting, pugnacious, insolent, 
and defiant: is he not apt to be an 
influence in the sermon? 



Effect of His Presence in the 
Church. 

No doubt there are men with such 
mental self-control and superb indiffer- 
ence to circumstances that they will 
ignore his existence. These are men 
of the great order, and one cannot 
expect many in the ministry or in any 
profession. For them there are no 
rules, and for them no hindrances ; they 
are invulnerable and irresistible. Upon 
ordinary men the mutineer has an irri- 
tating and deflecting power, so that 
a preacher, consciously or unconsciously, 
is ever taking him into account, and the 
sermon's course is to a certain extent 
regulated by this man's existence. If 
the minister be a gentle and fearful 



66 



Church Folks 



man, he is apt to be over-considerate, 
and will omit things which he ought 
to have said lest he should give offence. 
Instead of the sermon's pursuing its 
straight way and reaching its destina- 
tion with as little loss of distance as 
possible, it will be timid and subdued 
in style. The preacher will be continu- 
ally qualifying in order not to be caught 
by this critic, or he will be continually 
deferring lest he should give offence to 
this mighty man. People will have 
a vague sense of weakness, but they may 
never guess the cause. 



The Preacher's Way of Dealing 
with Him. 

Suppose, however, the preacher be 
a strong and determined man, but not 
one of the larger minds and the broader 
vision, then the mutineer will affect 
him after another fashion. From the 
beginning of the sermon the preacher 



Church Folks 67 

will set himself to deal with this man 
and to bring him to his senses. His 
character and his actions will be de- 
scribed and denounced and satirized 
and threatened. He will be pelted with 
the judgments of Holy Scripture; its 
commandments will be laid to his back 
like a lash ; the invitations of the Gospel 
will be denied him, and the historical 
rascals of the Bible will be suggested 
as his photograph. Unto any one who 
understands the allusion it will seem 
that this man is being hardly dealt 
with ; but to any one who thinks a little 
deeper it will be seen that the preacher 
is the victim. The preacher has grown 
sour and vindictive ; the sermon has lost 
its grace and tenderness; and I know 
not which is the greater calamity: a 
preacher without magnanimity or a ser- 
mon without nobility. 



68 Church Folks 

He is a Disturbing Factor Every- 
where. 

Remove this man from his place in 
that church and the minister will give 
himself without disturbance to deal 
both with saints and sinners in the love 
of God. 

The mutineer will also distinguish 
himself in arresting the activity of the 
church both in work and giving. Should 
he have a place, say, in the Sunday- 
school, he will quarrel with the superin- 
tendent and everv one of the teachers 
in turn till he has the school to himself, 
and then he will lament the decay of 
Christian sacrifice in the spirit. If 
he be appointed treasurer of a fund 
under the idea that this will give him 
something to do, he will be such an 
offence that no one will subscribe; and 
if he be not treasurer, he will declare 
everywhere that the fund does more 
mischief than good, and that those 



Church Folks 69 

desiring the welfare of the church 
should not subscribe. 

And besides all these mischievous 
achievements, he will poison the life of 
the church so that, instead of being 
gracious and harmonious, it will become 
bitter and quarrelsome. If there be 
a dispute in the church, this man will 
foment it; and if it be possible to set 
two people by the ears, he will do it. 
When there is an honest difference of 
opinion he will see that it be turned 
into a feud; and if a new proposal be 
put before the people, he will get up 
an acrimonious debate. 

Effectual, Methods of Tkeatiistg 
Him. 

Perhaps the most effectual system 
with such a man is not scolding and 
storming, but a policy of isolation. As 
nature makes a cyst and encloses any 
strange material so that it be kept sepa- 



jo Church Folks 

rate from the body, let this man be 
imprisoned in a place by himself. If 
he should offer any remark upon church 
affairs, let the other person answer on 
the state of the weather; and if he 
criticise a sermon, say that he is sorry 
to hear of his dyspepsia. If he rise to 
speak at a church meeting, let the 
silence be such as may be felt, and after 
he has spoken let the chairman call for 
the next business as if he had never 
existed. If he has ever to be spoken to, 
the best plan is to treat him as an 
absurdity, and play around him with 
ridicule, for this will give much inno- 
cent amusement to other people, and it 
is the particular attack which he cannot 
stand. Between loneliness and laughter 
he will depart to another church, and 
then let the happy congregation sing 
the Te Deum. 



V. 

Should the Old Clergyman be 
Shot ? 

One day, and perhaps quite sud- 
denly, a congregation awakens to the 
fact that a certain calamity has befallen 
the minister which will cripple his 
power more and more every day and 
may also ruin the life of the congrega- 
tion. It has nothing to do with his 
character, for he is really a much holier 
man, and perhaps also a much wiser 
one, than he was twenty years before, 
and certainly he commits fewer mis- 
takes in word and deed than in the days 
of his youth. £Tor does it concern his 
pastoral work — for he is more than 
ever the counsellor and friend of the 



J2 Church Folks 

people, speaking to them from a richer 
experience of life and a larger charity. 
It is not right to say that it touches his 
preaching, for that is likely to be quite 
as solid and as "useful as it ever was. 
Indeed, he is saying the very things he 
used to say with much acceptance, and 
in the way he used to say them — long 
ago. 

Nothing is wrong with him, only that 
he does not walk so quickly as he used 
to, that he speaks a little more slowly, 
and that last week he had to get older 
spectacles, that he does not always hear 
what is said to him, that his hair is 
passing from gray to white, that he is 
fatigued when going up a hill. It has 
happened to him just as it happens to 
other men: the minister is getting old. 

Old Ministers Impervious to New 
Ideas. 

As soon as they realize the fact — and 
it may be years before they do notice 



Church Folks 73 

it — the heads of a congregation begin 
to grow uneasy. Age has its advantages 
in the office of the ministry, but it has 
also very evident disadvantages, and 
when the balance is struck perhaps a 
congregation is right in the idea that 
it is losing, and not gaining, under the 
ministry of an old man. For one thing 
— and it is a very serious one — a minis- 
ter after a certain age is almost imper- 
vious to new ideas. Of course, the 
exact age will vary with different men, 
and it is dangerous even to hint at it, 
since the reader would always be able 
to mention exceptions. There are men 
to whose minds no new idea can find 
access at the age of thirty — men of 
hopeless dulness, who will be an incubus 
on a congregation all their days; and 
there are men whose minds will be 
hospitable to the latest ideas at the age 
of fourscore — men of unique mental 
freshness and vivacity. 

With the average man there comes 



74 Church Folks 

a time when his mind crystallizes and 
his beliefs become absolutely fixed. He 
may not resent the discoveries of 
younger men; he certainly will not 
assimilate them. He may not oppose 
new methods of action; he certainly 
will not adopt them. His preaching may 
be absolutely as good as it was before, 
because it will be the same, without any 
addition of new thought ; but it may be 
bad, comparatively speaking, because 
it should have much new material and 
should also be in much closer touch 
with the age. 

He Comes to be a Brake Upon the 
Coach. 

With middle age there is apt to set 
in a suspicion of the rising generation 
and a keen resentment of its stand- 
point, so that the middle-aged man falls 
into a critical and pessimistic mood. 
He comes to be a brake upon the coach, 



Church Folks j$ 

and while the brake is a useful thing 
in its own place, it is a poor substitute 
for horses. 

If his work be in a city church, it is 
a grave question whether any minister 
can now discharge it- with efficiency 
who is above sixty years of age. The 
multitude of details in a city parish, 
the excitement of the life, the severe 
demand upon the mind, and the heavy 
burden of responsibility call for a 
man in the prime of life, with an alert 
intellect and an unfailing body. It is 
likely as time goes on that men after, 
say, twenty years in a city will have 
to retire and take some quieter sphere 
in the country. They will be put, as it 
were, upon the semi-retired list. 

Besides, as one cannot fail to no- 
tice, the average man of middle age 
in bidding good-by finally to youth 
himself also largely isolates himself 
from young people. They may be 
respectful to him, and he may be 



y6 Church Folks 

interested in them, but there is now no 
common language and no common sym- 
pathy. They are apt to think him an 
" old fogy" (and as a middle-aged man 
myself I am inclined to think we do 
grow old-fogyish), and he is apt to 
think them frivolous. There are few 
men who can bridge the gulf between 
two generations and be equally accept- 
able both to the young and to the old, 
and the difficulty will increase rather 
than diminish. And all this is the 
penalty of growing old or even passing 
middle age. 

One Eminent Clergyman Suggested 
Shooting. 

What, then, is to be done with this 
unfortunate man ? And the difficulty 
has been felt so acutely that a distin- 
guished divine of our day — who is now 
dead — proposed that a minister who 
was past his prime should be taken out 



Church Folks jj 

(I presume to some sheltered spot) 
and shot. His idea was that clerical 
incumbents should be treated after the 
same fashion as worn-out horses. It 
has always been dangerous to use irony 
in England since the days of Swift, for 
although the English people may have 
every other quality under the sun, they 
certainly have not a quick sense of 
humor, and I am not certain that some 
people did not think that this eminent 
person was serious in his savage sug- 
gestion. Certainly he expressed the 
mind of some ungrateful and miserable 
congregations, who would be immensely 
relieved to get rid of an old servant in 
the quickest and cheapest fashion. 
Perhaps, also, it would be the kindest 
thing to the minister when he discovers 
himself to be an incumbrance on those 
whom he loves and who once loved him, 
to give him by some means the coup de 
grace; but there are objections on the 
part of an interfering law to this sum- 



78 Church Folks 

mary method of disposal, and one must 
abandon the idea of an ecclesiastical 
knacker's yard. 

If He Had Any Sense of Propriety 
He Would Die. 

You have, then, four courses of ac- 
tion with this unfortunate man, who, if 
he had had any sense of propriety would 
have died decently of a short and 
pathetic illness at the age of fifty-five, 
and the first is that the congregation do 
nothing and he be allowed to live out 
his days in the pulpit. Very likely he 
used to say about the age of thirty that 
he would never continue in the ministry 
after his leaf had become yellow; that 
he wondered how old men could not see 
that their day was past, and that it 
would be better for them to be pottering 
about in a country garden. When he 
said these brave things he was standing 
on the other side of the hedge, and now, 



Church Folks 79 

when lie is double the age, he has quite 
another view of the situation. He 
declares that he never felt younger in 
his life and never more fit to preach. 
At times he grows heroic, and declares 
that as long as he can crawl he will 
mount the pulpit stairs and that he will 
die in harness. 

Foolish people (mostly old ladies) 
will tell him that he never preached so 
ably as he did last Sunday, and he will 
incline his ear to this little circle of 
admirers and will refuse the advice of 
sensible men who have his welfare at 
heart and who suggest to him that he 
should of his own accord resign the 
office he has so honorably filled. So it 
will come to pass that church and city 
will see one of the saddest tragedies: 
a man scattering the congregation he 
once gathered and flinging away the 
reputation he once won. 



80 Church Folks 

To Suggest a Colleague Does Not 
Please. 

Or the congregation may pluck up 
courage and insist upon the worthy old 
gentleman having a colleague. " We 
do not want to lose your services/' it is 
explained to the minister by some 
shrewd diplomat who .knows that the 
minister, not to speak of the minister's 
wife, is watching him all the time with 
suspicious eyes. " We only wish to 
relieve you of the heavy end of your 
work. Would it not be a good thing 
that we should secure a vigorous young 
man who would take care of the classes 
and all the details of the church work, 
and preach once a day to save you 
fatigue and allow you to go for a 
lengthened holiday from time to time ? 
You have been very good in not asking 
relief from preaching, but the congrega- 
tion feels that it is only a bare duty to 
give you permanent assistance. Be- 



Church Folks 81 

sides/' and now the ambassador feels 
that the minister's wife is regarding 
him with contempt as a detected cheat 
and an utter humbug, " it would be 
a good thing for a young man to have 
the benefit of your preaching and 
advice." 

Very likely the old gentleman, after 
a conference with his wife and her lady 
friends, will refuse to have anything 
to do with a colleague, and will explain 
that he will propose such a measure him- 
self as soon as he really finds it neces- 
sary, and meantime that nothing could 
be worse for a young man than to be 
going about doing nothing. He will 
perhaps add, and add it with deep re- 
gret, that he is assured by influential 
members of the congregation that the 
intrusion of a colleague would undo all 
the work that has been done and rend 
the church in twain. 



82 Church Folks 

Trouble When He Consents to 
Have a Colleague. 

Should, however, the minister agree 
to a colleague, the result in nine cases 
out of ten will be disastrous. Either 
the old man will so dominate his 
younger brother that the latter will 
have no room for his individuality and 
will never rise to his height, or the 
young man will set himself against the 
old, and with the younger people at his 
back will drive the senior minister from 
the. church. It is indeed an unreasona- 
ble and unnatural position that two men 
should have equal authority, and all 
the more so when they are both so 
dependent on popular opinion. Was it 
ever heard of that there should be two 
captains in one ship, two commanders- 
in-chief in one army, or even two engi- 
neers working one engine ? And yet 
sane people will propose, not that a 
minister should have assistants or 



Church Folks 83 

curates, but that he should have a col- 
league to share with him equal author- 
ity and equal responsibility. 

Forcing the Old Minister to 
Retire. 

Of course, a congregation may make 
it so uncomfortable for the man who 
has served it during the best years of 
his life that he will have no alternative, 
and will be glad to leave, even if he go 
to obscurity and poverty. And when 
a congregation takes this way of cutting 
the knot one almost despairs of Chris- 
tianity. The meanest merchant who 
ever wrangled over a cent would not 
treat an old clerk as a body of Christian 
people will sometimes treat a poor and 
worn-out minister. They have used up 
his youth and his manhood and his 
enthusiasm and his energy; they have 
had the bloom of his mind and the 
harvest of his soul. For them he lived 



84 Church Folks 

and thought; for them in the days of 
his strength he exhausted himself every 
Sunday, and has permanently worn out 
his reserves of life. All that they 
could get out of him they have got, and 
now, after watching for a year or two, 
they have come to the conclusion that 
his best days are done, and they make 
him a trumpery presentation and bid 
him go. Then they go, cap in hand, 
to some popular young minister and 
entreat his favor, declaring that their 
hearts have gone out to him, and they 
believe it to be God's will that he should 
be their minister. And he, in his turn, 
comes, and soon is to be heard declaring 
that there never was such a loyal people. 
Let him wait a little while. 

Why Not Organize a Retirement 

Scheme ? 

Would it not be better that each 
denomination should organize a retire- 



Church Folks 85 

ment scheme upon a large scale with 
two conditions ? The first would be 
that every minister should be removed 
from active work at the age of, say, 
sixty-five, and afterward he might give 
assistance to his brethren or live in 
quietness, as he pleases. The second 
condition would be that he receive a 
retiring allowance of not less than half 
his salary up to, say, $4000. Should 
any one say that such a law is arbitrary, 
then the answer is that surely any 
minister would prefer to retire by law 
rather than by force, and that he would 
be in good company, for he would share 
the lot of every naval and military 
officer and every civil servant and every 
officer of any great corporation through- 
out the civilized world. 

And the Church must not fall behind 
the State. Upon the personnel of her 
ministry must she depend for her visi- 
ble success, and her aim ought to be that 
each congregation have a minister in 



86 Church Folks 

full strength of mind and body, and 
that each man, after he has exhausted 
himself in the service of the Church, 
should be kept in comfort during the 
remaining years of his life. 



Aged Ministers in Active Duty are 
a Hindrance. 

Short of immorality and unbelief, 
one cannot imagine a greater hindrance 
to the energy of the Church than a large 
proportion of aged and infirm minis- 
ters in active duty. For this will mean 
obsolete theology, the neglect of the 
young, isolation from the spirit of the 
day, and endless wrangling. Nothing 
would more certainly reinforce the 
energy of the Church than the compul- 
sory retirement upon satisfactory terms 
of every minister above the age of 
sixty-five. For this would mean not 
only a reserve of good men upon whom 
the Church could depend in emergen- 



Church Folks 87 

cies, but a perpetual tide of fresh 
thought. 

At present, congregations have a 
grievance against old ministers who 
think they are young, and old ministers 
have a grievance against congregations 
who do not respect age, and between the 
two arise many scandals and breaches 
of the peace. When the Church is as 
well managed as a first-rate business 
concern, then this standing feud will be 
healed, and no one will be so much 
respected and loved in the Christian 
Church as the faithful minister who has 
served her in the fulness of his strength, 
and now in the days of his well-earned 
rest enriches her with his counsel. 



VI. 

The Minister and the Organ. 

Songs of praise are a part of public 
worship with every body of Christians 
— except the Society of Friends, whom 
I sometimes regard with envy — and I 
wish it to be understood at once that 
I am not prepared to suggest their aboli- 
tion. The saints of the Old Testament 
had a musical service which was enough 
to fill the heart of a ritualist with de- 
spair, and one can only faintly imagine 
the kind of life which the priest lived 
who was responsible for the Temple 
orchestra and had to deal with the play- 
ers on instruments. The 'New Testa- 
ment saints began without an orchestra, 
and really seemed to have managed 



Church Folks 89 

their praise for some time on common- 
sense principles, doing the best they 
could with joyful lips and singing 
bravely in black prisons. But, like 
many other good people, they did not 
know when they were well off, and by 
and by they invented the melancholy 
chants which have been a drawback 
to Christians of all generations. 

One sometimes wonders how the 
Friends are able to look so peaceful and 
why their w r orship is so delightful, and 
I am tempted to think it is because they 
have no music in their service. Had we 
none, a frequent cause of trouble would 
be removed from many a congregation, 
and the minister would hardly know 
what to do with his time. Yet I wish 
it to be distinctly understood at the 
same time that I regard music as a 
necessary part of divine worship, that 
organists are the strength of the Chris- 
tian Church, and that every person who 
does not appreciate to the full his choir- 



90 Church Folks 

master and his choir is an ignorant and 
ill-natured Philistine. 



Why Consideration is Shown the 
Organist. 

If there ever is any trouble in the 
congregation about the music, and if 
the minister ever worries himself, let it 
be admitted at once that the congrega- 
tion and the minister are alone to blame. 
But there are difficulties, and they may 
be mentioned in a spirit of becoming 
humility. For one thing, the organist 
is an artist, and every artist has a 
nature of special refinement which can- 
not bear the rough-and-tumble ordinary 
methods of life. With a man of com- 
mon clay you deal in a practical, 
straightforward, and even brutal fash- 
ion, arguing with him, complaining to 
him, and putting him right when he is 
wrong. But no man must handle 
precious porcelain in such fashion, or 



Church Folks 9 1 

the artist will be instantly wounded 
and will resign and carry his pathetic 
story to every quarter, for he is lifted 
above criticism and public opinion. It 
is impossible to teach him anything; 
it is an insult to suppose that anything 
could be better; it is best to accept 
what he gives, and to recognize that it 
is his sphere to do as he pleases and the 
sphere of every other person to declare 
that what he does is, on every occasion, 
too lovely for human words, and that 
its effect is almost too much for ex- 
hausted human nature. This is the 
tribute which the congregation ought to 
pay to the most spiritual of artists, the 
organist. 

Music is What the Congregation 

Wants. 

One really becomes impatient with 
the minister, who ought to know better 
and yet forgets his own place, owing to. 



92 Church Folks 

a want of artistic appreciation and to 
an overweening sense of his own office. 
He encroaches on the organist and is 
justly punished. The minister ought 
to remember — and the congregation 
may assist him in remembering — that 
his work is subordinate to that of the 
artist, and that the rest of the service is 
simply intended to be a support and en- 
vironment for the music. What the con- 
gregation wants to hear is, not his 
sermon, although I have never .known 
an organist object to the sermon, pro- 
vided the preacher did not occupy 
too much time. Indeed, many organ- 
ists, I have reason to believe, welcome 
the sermon as a rest for their overstrung 
nerves. What the congregation really 
desires to hear is the anthem, and the 
success of the day depends upon its 
performance. When a minister has 
laid this fact to heart, and taken care 
that the people who have been raised 
into a Heaven which cannot be de- 






Church Folks 93 

scribed by the singing are not unduly 
harassed by his stupid words, he has at 
least escaped one rock of offence. 

It is also most provoking that a 
minister will interfere with a selection 
of hymns, and still harping on his ser- 
mon, will select hymns which corre- 
spond with its theme. Very likely the 
hymns may suit the text perfectly and 
may be very popular with the people, 
but it is only the organist who knows 
whether the tunes in the hymn-book be 
high or low class music. The tunes 
may be so popular that every person is 
thirsting to sing them with all his heart 
and at the pitch of his voice, but an 
organist will be simply aghast at the 
thought of a thousand people going at 
large, as it were, in his province. It is 
a privilege, and a doubtful one at the 
best, that they should be allowed to 
sing at all, but if it be granted, they 
must mingle trembling with their joy. 



94 Church Folks 

Organists are Doing Away with 
Popular Tunes. 

One of the chief efforts of a really 
cultured organist — there are exceptions 
— is to extirpate popular tunes and to 
replace them with arrangements which 
will teach the congregation to keep 
silence. A case came to my notice at 
one time — and when I hear of such 
things I do not know how my brethren 
have been made — where a minister 
got into a white heat with an organist 
because that eminent person had in- 
vented a tune of his own for " Rock 
of Ages/' which was a dream of 
beauty and reduced the congregation 
to distant admiration. Nothing is more 
irritating to the musical temperament 
than to hear the people, who are always 
inspired with an insane desire to make 
a joyful noise, get hold of a really fine 
tune and make it afterward hateful to 
delicate ears. Nothing is more neces- 






Church Folks 95 

sary than to guard the congregational 
praise from these follies and at once to 
remove from use even the noblest tune 
if the people have finally taken posses- 
sion of it. 

Only ceaseless vigilance on the part 
of the organist can secure the music 
from the incursion of the congregation, 
for they are so determined and full 
of mad ambition that they will even set 
themselves to master strange tunes, and 
in the course of a month will drown the 
choir with music which was intended to 
be beyond their reach; and the wrong- 
headedness with which a minister will 
support the congregation in this raid 
upon another man's kingdom deserves 
all the trouble which falls upon his 
head. 

People Readily Subscribe to an 
Organ Fund. 

There were days — and some of us 
who are no longer young can remember 



96 Church Folks 

them — when no instrument was used in 
public worship, and when every aid of 
this description, except a tuning-fork, 
was judged to be a return to the ele- 
ments of the Old Testament. But 
those were days of darkness. To-day 
we are living in a brighter age. A 
congregation may nowadays give so 
little to its minister that his wife hardly 
.knows how to get respectable clothing 
for the family, and may not contribute 
anything worth mentioning to foreign 
missions and hospitals; but there is no 
self-respecting congregation which will 
not now insist on possessing an organ. 
People who will harden their hearts 
against the most useful charity will sub- 
scribe to an organ fund, and what can- 
not be secured by subscription will be 
obtained by a bazaar with gambling. 
When the organ is opened by a distin- 
guished musician, who is brought from 
a distance, the congregation will regard 
him with awe as an almost supernatural 



Church Folks 97 

being, and will count the event of more 
importance than a revival of religion. 
They will be utterly overcome by the 
extent and variety of sound which he 
will bring from the instrument, and 
when he uses the Vox Humana mothers 
of families can only look at one another 
and shake their heads as if they were 
hearing sounds from the other world. 
When he subtly suggests thunder by 
turning on the full force of the organ, 
the heads of the congregation will con- 
gratulate themselves by signal, because 
every one can now see that they have 
received full value for their money. 

eccentricities and demands of a 
New Organ. 

After the recital is over the great 
man will improvise for his own amuse- 
ment, and when it is possible for ordi- 
nary beings to speak to him, a little 
group of deferential office bearers will 



98 Church Folks 

as.k him what he thinks of the organ. 
He may give a patronizing and guarded 
approval, but he will be careful to point 
out the number of stops which ought to 
be added and the number of improve- 
ments in action which are absolutely 
necessary. He will, in fact, suggest 
that they have only got the mere foun- 
dation of an organ, and that the com- 
pletion will take many a year and be an 
endless opportunity for spending. Per- 
haps he may be good enough to say that 
some $1500, laid out in one or two 
improvements he rapidly sketches, will 
make the instrument respectable for an 
ordinary organist; but he may leave 
them under the impression that in order 
to make it suitable for a master like 
himself the congregation would require 
to concentrate its financial resources 
upon the organ for the next ten years. 
If the congregation has been at all 
lifted by the possession of its new 
organ, nothing will so chasten vanity 



Church Folks 99 

and self-conceit as the visit of a musi- 
cian who has taken a degree and has 
several letters after his name; and if 
any person depreciates his advice as 
that of a hypercritical player, and sup- 
poses there will be no further trouble 
about that organ, his innocence is de- 
lightful, and shows that he has never 
had anything to do with musical instru- 
ments in places of public worship. 

Whatever trials the congregation 
may have had before with draughts in 
the building or questions of heating or 
difficulties in finance or disturbances 
with mutineers, all these things will be 
less than nothing compared with the 
eccentricities and demands of its new 
organ. If it be blown by hand, then it 
will be found so large that two blowers 
are required, and so it will be proposed 
to have a hydraulic engine. This engine 
will not go two Sundays out of four 
because the pressure of water has failed, 
and then some members of the congrega- 
te 



ioo Church Folks 

tion will have to work the bellows — if 
these have been wisely left for con- 
venience — and before they have finished 
their work deacons of a stout habit of 
body and unaccustomed to manual labor 
will have quite a new feeling about that 
organ and will confine their compli- 
ments to the Hebrew language. 

When Real Tribulation Begins. 

By and by it will be suggested that 
the organ should be played by electric- 
ity ; and the congregation, but especially 
the minister and the authorities in 
charge of the music, will now begin to 
know what real tribulation means. The 
readjustment, it is said, will take six 
weeks, and be of a comparatively slight 
character; it will really take about a 
year, with some months thrown in, and 
during that time the congregation will 
have an opportunity of inspecting the 
different parts of its organ in the 



Church Folks ioi 

church hall and classrooms and passages 
and outhouses, where it will be lying 
in mysterious fragments. 

During the interim the members of 
the congregation will have forgotten 
that it is impossible for educated people 
to praise God without instrumental 
music, and in sheer absence of mind 
they will be singing more heartily than 
they have done for the last ten years. 
x\s there is no organ, the fancy tunes 
will have to be given up, and the people 
will be allowed to worship God with all 
their might. Ignorant strangers com- 
ing into the church, and not remember- 
ing that there is no organ, will say they 
never heard better singing in their lives, 
and the choir will be insulted with 
compliments about the way in which 
they are leading the congregation, while 
there is really no high-class choir, one 
or two excepted, which does not con- 
sider it an impertinence that the con- 
gregation should dare to follow it, and 



102 Church Folks 

which does not want to go its own way 
alone. 



Will be Six Months in the Doctor's 
Hands. 

When the organ is finally reformed 
and the day comes for its reopening, 
the congregation pretends to be de- 
lighted, but it has a shrewd idea that 
the days of its liberty are over. The 
members of the congregation may have 
ventured to follow afar off an organ 
driven by a water-engine with a choir 
in correspondence, but they will not 
have the audacity to intrude upon an 
organ played by electricity and assisted 
by a still more elevated choir. If the 
congregation, however, be willing, 
through a sense of politeness, to keep 
silent, the electric organ will have no 
such scruples, for its extravagances will 
be endless. If it consent to play the 
first voluntary, it will finish up with a 



Church Folks 103 

long, melodious howl, for which no one 
can hold the organist responsible, and 
it will give melodious toots during the 
prayers which may be responses, but 
have not been arranged for; and then 
in the middle of the Te Deum, through 
some fit of pure cantankerousness, it 
will take refuge in a stubborn silence. 
For six months after the opening 
it will be in the doctor's hands, and 
for a year following will not have com- 
pletely shaken off the habit of a gay 
and frivolous youth, and the congrega- 
tion will be torn between two minds — 
secret satisfaction when the organ is not 
going and it has a chance of singing 
free, and a fierce desire to cart it away 
and have it thrown into the nearest 
river. 

What between building and renewing 
the organ and adding stops to the 
organ and tuning the organ, the organ 
will cost every year in interest on 
capital and current expenditure enough 



1 04 Church Folks 

money to have kept a missionary in 
foreign parts or to have supported a 
minister in a poor district of the city; 
and what it costs in anxiety to the 
organist, who is apt to be blamed for 
everything, and who has generally to 
spend an hour in its recesses with his 
coat off before service, and to the con- 
gregation in chronic irritation, would, 
if reduced to money value and multi- 
plied by the number of organ-ridden 
churches, clear the debt off every for- 
eign mission in the Anglo-Saxon world. 

Choirs are Often Accused of 
Quarrelling. 

My own experience of a choir and 
also of an organist has been altogether 
delightful, which is one of my singular 
mercies of which I am not worthy ; but 
I move about in the world, and I have 
heard things. As a choir consists, it is 
presumed, of a number of select persons, 



Church Folks 105 

male and female, who have correct ears 
and rich voices and are lovers of the 
most delicate and spiritual of the arts 
— the most refined persons, in fact, in 
a congregation — one would take for 
granted that the whole atmosphere of 
a choir would be full of gentleness and 
peace. Rumors, however, reach one's 
ears that the power of quarrelling 
within certain church choirs can only 
be exceeded by the high spirit of a body 
of Irish patriots, and that there is 
almost nothing so trivial and invisible 
but that it will set a choir by the ears. 
It may be the place in the stalls or the 
singing of a particular part or a correc- 
tion of the choir-master or a word of 
approval to another chorister or a re- 
mark dropped by one of the choir — so 
tender are the feelings of a chorister — 
anything or, for that matter, nothing, 
will hurt. He will sulk or make un- 
pleasant remarks or resign or drive 
some other persons out, and then on 



106 Church Folks 

some great occasion all the members of 
the choir will resign and take themselves 
so seriously that the event will be con- 
sidered equal in interest . to a war. 
Upon the whole, the choir rather enjoys 
a crisis of this kind, for it gives stimulus 
to the artistic temperament. But there 
are some who do not enter wholly into 
the enjoyment. One of these is the 
wretched minister, who finds himself 
some Sunday in the position of being 
his own precentor, and who has to be 
the mediator in every dispute; and the 
others are the members of the congrega- 
tion, who are apt to be set on fire by 
sparks from this musical conflagration, 
and who are never perfectly certain 
whether they may not some Sunday 
have to do their own singing. 

When the Old Tunes Were in 
Vogue. 

Times there are, but possibly they are 
foolish moments, when one remembers 



Church Folks 107 

with fond and wistful regret a country 
kirk where a precentor raised that 
time-honored old Scots tune " Martyr- 
dom" with a powerful note, and a con- 
gregation of clear-voiced and big-lungecl 
men and women took up the tune, none 
keeping silence, and sang the air glori- 
ously, with here and there a bass and 
a tenor, even, perhaps, an alto thrown in 
to enrich the music. And there are other 
times when one who ought to have known 
better things has been much stirred in 
his heart by hearing the people sing at 
a mission service one of those tunes 
which may not be very good music, and 
may lend themselves to loudness of 
voice, but which are well called revival 
tunes because they quicken the people's 
souls and give expression to their joy 
as for the first time they realize that 
God has loved them and has given for 
their salvation His only and well- 
beloved Son. 

It is w T ell that the praise of God 



io8 Church Folks 



should have every assistance of good 
taste and musical art in subordination 
to the rights of the people, but it is best 
that men should sing with lips which 
God has opened and from hearts which 
have been redeemed at Calvary. 






VII. 

The Pew and the Man In It. 

Various changes have been wrought 
in the interior of the church since the 
days of our fathers, but no change is 
more significant than the opening of 
the pew, which in its way has been 
almost as great a change as the lowering 
of the franchise in England and the 
abolition of political disabilities. One's 
memory recalls the good old days, 
which we call good largely because they 
were old and are now hidden in a mist 
of reverent affection. One sees the long 
row of family pews, each carefully 
secluded from its neighbor and shut in 



1 1 o Church Folks 

from the common street of the aisle by 
a door which was fastened inside by 
a robust hasp or, in the case of superior 
pews, by a little brass bolt. 

When the Pew-Owner was of 
Importance. 

If the tenant of the pew belonged 
to the upper circle of the district, he 
covered it with cloth — red or green — 
furnished it with a cushion three inches 
deep — which contained in its recesses 
the dust of twenty-five years — and a box 
for Bibles with a lock, where the books 
of worship could be kept in security 
from a stranger's hand. There were 
also hassocks, of a substantial character, 
not for purposes of kneeling — for no 
one in such a pew would have thought 
of such an inconvenient effort — but that 
people might have their feet comfort- 
ably propped. And there were even 
such delicacies of comfort as an elbow 



Church Folks 1 1 1 

rest in the pew, so that one fortunate 
sitter might be able to hold up his head 
with his hand as he listened to the 
sermon. 

It was an interesting sight, and one 
cherishes it in grateful remembrance, 
when the local dignitary came in on 
Sunday morning to take possession of 
his mansion and to share in divine 
worship. The pew-opener, a shrewd 
old man brought up in the atmos- 
phere of kirks, and whose very face 
suggested the most abstruse doctrines, 
who had been speaking on profes- 
sional subjects with the deacons of the 
place, and had allowed fifty of the 
commonalty to pass without more than 
a faint nod and a reference to the 
weather— couched in subdued tones — 
comes forward to receive the chiefs of 
the synagogue and to lead them to their 
seats. He goes first down the aisle with 
stately tread, looking neither to the 
right hand nor to the left, followed by 



112 Church Folks 

Dives's wife; after her the children; 
following them the stranger that was 
within their gates, and, last of all, con- 
tented and superior, Dives himself. 

The Pew Door was Fastened with 
a Hasp. 

On arrival at the mansion-house door 
the pew-opener, dexterously unlocking 
the door with one hand and wheeling 
round on one foot, faces the procession 
behind the open door as it stretches 
half way across the aisle and stands 
there after a little bow, looking straight 
before him, deferential, yet not uncon- 
scious of his place in the hierarchy of 
the church, and the members of the 
family file in and take their places till 
at last there is hardly room for the 
great man himself. It will be enough, 
however, if he can just sit down, for 
in that case the influence of a heavy 
body will gradually make room for 



Church Folks 113 

itself, and the lighter bodies in the pew 
will have to give up as the service goes 
on till at last Dives is comfortably 
settled. 

Certainly the door was closed with 
an effort, and more than once during 
the service you heard it creak, and could 
not help hoping — but that was in the 
days of one's boyhood — that by some 
fortunate chance the door would one 
day give way, and Dives, who depended 
too utterly upon it, might be landed in 
the aisle. The hasp, however, not to 
say the hinges also, was strongly made, 
and the pew-opener saw that everything 
had been done for safety as well as dig- 
nity, and then he processed back again 
to the door, not unconscious that he had 
acquitted himself with credit and that 
he had created at least a sensation by 
his ceremonious disposal of the rich 
man and his family in their pew. 



ii4 



Church Folks 



The Pew-Holder Made Himself 
Comfortable. 



Dives unlocks the Bible box with 
a key which is upon his ring, and 
distributes the books as if he were pre- 
senting prizes to a school, while the 
mother of the family gives to its young- 
est members such provision in the way 
of sweets as will sustain exhausted 
nature through the next two hours. 

There were cases where Dives was 
unmarried and had no other occupant 
for his mansion save his honorable self, 
but he was conducted in all the same, 
and set himself with dignity at the end 
of the lonely pew. And if you suppose 
that any stranger desiring a seat would 
be put in upon Dives, then you do not 
understand the discretion of the pew- 
opener; and if you imagine that a 
casual, dropping into that church, 
would himself try to break in upon that 
majestic vacancy, your imagination is 



Church Folks 115 

bold enough, but it has not yet mastered 
the expression on Dives's face. 



People Then Went to Their Own 
Churches. 

Strangers did not in former days ap- 
pear in churches unless they were guests 
with some of the families, because 
every one had his own church, and he 
went to it through rain or shine, who- 
ever preached and whatever was going 
on either there or elsewhere. People 
boasted in those ancient times that they 
never wandered, and an absolute and 
unidentified stranger might have stag- 
gered the pew-opener, but being equal 
to any emergency, he would have con- 
ducted him to his own pew, which, for 
purposes of convenience, was near the 
pulpit, so that the wanderer might not 
interfere with any other person's prop- 
erty and might be under surveillance. 
There was an appearance of solidity 



1 1 6 Church Folks 

when the church was full, and of 
respectability; there was also a sugges- 
tion of dignity and prosperity, and it is 
right to add some flavor also of family 
unity and homely comfort which was 
most agreeable and comforting to that 
old-time congregation. 

Open-Handed Hospitality of the 
Modern Church. 

If an old-fashioned person, and one, 
perhaps, too much enamored of the past, 
with all its faults, desires to receive 
a shock, he has only to visit one of the 
modern churches of the extreme type, 
which are usually called free and open, 
as if they were public houses or pieces 
of waste ground on which rubbish is 
landed. Openness has been carried to 
its full length, for not only are there 
no pew doors and no Bible boxes and no 
cloth for your back and no cushion into 
which vou can sink — there may be a 



Church Folks 117 

mat and there may be hassocks — and 
hardly any division between one pew 
and another, but perhaps there are no 
pews at all, only chairs, and you stick 
your hymn-book into a rack in the back 
of your front neighbor's chair, who 
moves when you do so, and you kneel 
against that chair — if you are able to 
kneel at all — and then you push your 
front neighbor, which he naturally 
resents. Of course, there is no pew- 
opener, because there are no pew-doors 
to open, and more than that, there is 
no particular place for you to sit, be- 
cause you can sit where you please and 
take a different seat at each service if 
you wish. 

In the Church of To-day All, Are 
Strangers. 

No pilgrim nor stranger need be 
abashed in the modern church, for there 
is no other person there except people 



1 1 8 Church Folks 

like himself; all are strangers, since 
they have no right to an inch of ground, 
and all are pilgrims, since they need 
not sit twice in the same place. ]STo one 
can complain of any person's selfish- 
ness, since all things are held in com- 
mon. 

If Dives, locked within his door, 
suggested exclusiveness, it may be said 
for him it was the exclusiveness of 
home, and within the pew there was 
a little community — the original com- 
munity of life, which is the family. 
And if something can be said for gen- 
eral free and openness on the ground 
of Christian brotherhood and human 
equality, one still clings to the belief 
that he is entitled to be with his own 
people — his wife, that is to say, and his 
children — in the House of God, and 
that he is more likely to worship God 
with reverence when he has some slight 
privacy. 



Church Folks 



119 



The Family Existed Before the 
Pew. 

Possibly a visitor may feel more lib- 
erty in a free and open church, but, on 
the other hand, the family is broken up 
into units at the door, and no mixed 
multitude can ever make so strong a 
congregation or one that appeals so 
powerfully to the eye as the long line 
of pews, let us say without doors and 
furniture, but each containing a family, 
with the mother at the head of the pew 
and the father at the foot and the young 
men and women between. For the 
family existed before the church, and 
if the church is not to be a mere pos- 
session of priests or a lecture hall, the 
church must rest on the family. 

The pew is a testimony to the family, 
and ought to be maintained, with its 
doors removed, and it does not matter 
whether a man pay $50 a year for his 
pew or fifty cents. The church authori- 
ties should see that the householder 



120 Church Folks 

has his pew, with room enough in it for 
himself, his wife, and the children 
which God has given them. There is 
no reason in the world why the rich 
man should not pay a handsome sum 
for his church home. And some of us 
have never been able to understand why 
an artisan should not give something 
for his church home also. Surely every 
man wishes to do what is right in the 
support of his church. 

Sunday Beggars and Monday 
Beggars. 

Every self-respecting man likes to 
pay for his home, whether it be large 
or small, and it touches a man's honor 
to live in a workhouse, where he pays 
no rent and depends on the public. 
There is no necessity that this home 
feeling and this just independence 
should be denied in the House of God, 
but it rather seems a good thing that 
the man who works and gives to pro- 



Church Folks 121 

vide a house where he and his children 
can live together in comfort and self- 
respect six days of the week should do 
his part to sustain the house where they 
worship God on the seventh day. 

He is a poor creature who will allow 
a rich man to pay his rent for him on 
weekdays, and I have never been able 
to see where there is any difference 
between being a beggar on Sunday and 
a beggar on Monday. 

Possession of a Pew is a Test of 
Character. 

One, however, wishes to add, and 
with emphasis, that the possession of 
a pew in the sense in which a man pos- 
sesses his house is a test of character 
and an opportunity for hospitality. 
There is one kind of man who not only 
regrets that he cannot now have a door 
on his pew, but who would have it 
roofed in if he could, who will resent 
the introduction of a stranger — al- 



122 Church Folks 

though there be plenty of room — as a 
personal affront, and will order strangers 
to be removed if, unhappily, they have 
been placed in his pew by mistake 
before he arrives. If he only occupy 
half a pew, the officers of the church 
dare not put in another set of tenants 
for the other half, because he will 
quarrel with them as to which half they 
are to occupy, as to who is to go in first, 
as to a hymn-book that has wandered 
out of its place, or about a friend they 
brought one day who infringed two 
inches upon his share of the pew. It is 
fair to say that the miscreant is no 
worse in church than he is elsewhere, 
for he is a churl everywhere — jealous, 
contentious, inhospitable, unmanage- 
able. 

One Man Whose Pew is Open and 
Tree to Ale. 

But, as a make-weight to this abuse 
of the pews, take my dear old friend 



Church Folks 123 

Jeremiah Goodheart. He is now alone 
with his gentle, kindly wife, for the 
children have made homes for them- 
selves; but he .keeps the family pew, 
and will on no account give up a sitting. 
It sometimes seems to the managers of 
the church that Mr. Goodheart might 
take a homeless family in, but they do 
not press the matter when they remem- 
ber how long he and his have had that 
pew to themselves, and how well he uses 
the vacant space. He has a number of 
intimates who are now old and gray- 
headed, and who come from time to 
time to worship with him and his wife, 
and feel that they are in right good 
company. He has also an outer circle 
of friends which can be numbered by 
the hundred, and its members are also 
in the habit of dropping in to sit in that 
pew; and if he sees a stranger at the 
church door, Goodheart must needs say 
a word to him of welcome and good 
cheer. If the stranger happen to be 



1 24 Church Folks 

a young man, he will take him by the 
arm and bring him down to his pew, 
and the chances are he will ask him 
home to dinner and will tell him never 
to sit alone in his lodgings, but to count 
this house his home. 

There is a Welcome Awaiting Him 
in Heaven. 

And Mistress Goodheart tells her 
friends with much satisfaction the size 
of the joint they have on Sundays, 
because, although their own sons have 
gone, they never sit down without some 
young men as guests, and Mr. Good- 
heart made their acquaintance through 
the pew. If some family in the church 
has visitors, and extra sittings are 
needed, why, then, the children of the 
family sit in the Goodheart pew and 
are received with open arms. Bless his 
white hair and genial face, he never is 
entirely happy and never enjoys the 



Church Folks 125 

sermon unless he has his full contingent 
of guests ; and there are times when he 
brings one too many, and then the other 
pew-holders contend as to who shall 
have him for their guest. 

What he is in church he is at home, 
with an open heart and an open hand, 
never content unless his friends are 
coming and going, never angry unless 
they will not stay and have a meal with 
him, never so full of joy as when he is 
doing a good turn or going over old days 
with those to whom he is bound by a 
hundred ties of kindly words and deeds. 
As he has dealt with all men, strangers 
and friends alike, in his church and in 
his house, so will God deal by him, and 
for him we may feel sure there will be 
a hospitable welcome waiting where the 
churches of earth have changed into 
Our Father's House. 



VIII. 

The Genteel Tramps in Our 
Churches. 

It is no exaggeration to say that the 
use of money is a test of character and 
a revelation of a man's nature. There 
are men who lose money by their 
foolishness — Wastrels ; there are men 
who spend it on their vices — Prodigals ; 
there are men who hoard it with jeal- 
ousy — Misers ; there are men who lay it 
out in well-doing — they are the Wise 
Men. 

When I say well-doing I am not 
thinking of that unreasoning and in- 
discriminate charity which, whether it 
take the form of alms to a lazy vaga- 
bond or a large benefaction for the 



Church Folks 1 27 

creation of paupers, is a curse and not 
a blessing, a sin and not a duty. We 
are not to read in a mechanical fashion 
the advice of our Lord to the young 
ruler to sell his possessions and give to 
the poor, for though that might have 
been the only pledge of sincerity he 
could give in that day, it would be a 
great calamity in our day. 

If a millionaire were to realize his 
estate and to bestow the proceeds upon 
that residuum of our population who 
will not work so long as they can beg, 
he would do the greatest injury within 
his power to his fellow-men. If the 
same person used his means to give the 
opportunity of honest work, whereby 
men could support themselves and their 
families, he would confer one of the 
greatest blessings in his power upon his 
fellow-men. 

Whatever may have been the case in 
ancient times, there can be no question 
that in our day the man who establishes 



128 Church Folks 

a manufactory in a small town and pays 
fair wages does ten times more good 
than tie who would use his wealth to 
found an almshouse. 

Head as Well as Heart is Needed 
ik Givijstg. 

"When a man's family claims have 
been properly met, and his business 
enterprises have been soundly sustained, 
perhaps the best two things a man can 
do with his superfluous wealth is to use 
it to send the knowledge of God to those 
who sit in darkness, or to bestow the 
priceless gift of education upon those 
who hunger and thirst for knowledge. 
It is unfortunate that many persons 
have not learned to give, but it is also 
unfortunate that many people do not 
know where to give. The head as well 
as the heart is needed in giving, and 
giving is a training for one's brain as 
well as for one's feelings. 



Church Folks 129 

There are congregations which bring 
no intelligence to their giving, and for 
any good it does half their liberality 
had better have been flung into the sea. 
They keep up mission-houses in poor 
parts of the city, which are simply insti- 
tutions for the propagation of pauper- 
ism, and the congregations they gather 
are largely made up of people who 
object to work between meals. Reports 
are published every year showing the 
number present at the services and con- 
taining harrowing accounts of the 
misery which has been relieved. 



Congregations aee Easy to Find. 

As a matter of fact, if you give an 
able organizer $3000 a year to spend 
in a downtown district, he will secure 
you at any time a congregation of about 
five hundred people; and if the mem- 
bers of the mother church wish to go 
down and be present at an enthusiastic 



130 Church Folks 

meeting, then all that has to be done 
is for one of its wealthy members to 
play the host on that evening. The 
^gathering, both in numbers and en- 
thusiasm, will leave nothing to be 
desired, and the good people of the rich 
church will go home feeling that they 
have a flourishing mission and are 
doing an immense deal of good, while 
the chances are that they have really no 
mission in the religious sense of the 
word, and that their money has done 
incalculable mischief. 

Upon the whole, the mission churches 
maintained on a principle of lavish 
expenditure by rich congregations corre- 
spond exactly in their moral effect to 
the almshouses founded by people who 
have more money than they know what 
to do with and not enough brains to 
know how to use it. 

Had the money squandered on soup 
kitchens and clothing clubs and such 
like schemes for the maintenance of 



Church Folks 131 

mendicants and their families been 
employed for the erection of a proper 
church, where honest people among the 
poor might worship God with self- 
respect, or of sanitary property, where 
working people might live in decency 
at moderate rents, or for the creation 
of a scholarship by which lads poor in 
money but rich in brains could obtain 
the higher education, then social re- 
formers would have cause to bless the 
Church, and the Church would be a 
means of far greater good in the com- 
munity. 

When the Minister Has a Soft 
Heart. 

A West End congregation does not, 
however, need to go to the East End 
to do mischief, for it can create, if it 
so please, a nursery of genteel tramps 
within its own borders. When a minis- 
ter and his people have the reputation 



132 Church Folks 

of a soft heart, and by that is often 
meant a soft head, the news spreads far 
and wide, and there is an immediate 
accession to the number of worshippers. 
Tradespeople of the lower class who 
wish to push their business and do not 
feel sufficiently confident about the goods 
they sell; young men who have lost 
their situations because they wouldn't 
do their work; families of women who 
would consider it beneath them to do 
anything for their own living and are 
adepts in what may be called genteel 
raiding; incapable men of business 
whom no bank would trust with $50, 
but who hope to get $1000 by quoting 
the Sermon on the Mount — all these 
gather and sit down within the shelter- 
ing walls of this Christian asylum. 

They All Come to Benefit Them- 
Selves Financially. 

They all come, according to their 
own story, for the most excellent and 



Church Folks 133 

affecting reasons: because their last 
congregation was cold and they wished 
to live in a warmer atmosphere ; because 
they have received benefit from the 
minister's preaching and feel it to be 
a privilege to be under his care ; because 
they desire to do some good work, and 
have heard from afar of the zeal of 
this congregation; but chiefly on account 
of the spirituality, both of minister and 
people, which has been as a loadstone 
drawing these simple souls to their 
natural home. Their real reason, to 
put it in plain English, is that they do 
not care to work for their livelihood as 
honest folk do, and that they propose 
to cast themselves on congregational 
charity. They have come not because 
they care one cent what the minister 
preaches nor what he is, provided only 
he has no discernment, but simply and 
solely to beg. They are adepts in their 
own department, and have brought con- 
gregational begging to the height of 



134 Church Folks 

a fine art. They do not borrow as soon 
as they arrive, and the more skilful 
members of the craft will never mention 
money at all. Their desire, as they 
explain to the minister in his study 
with a diffidence and a delicacy which 
impress him very much if he be a man 
of simple piety, is simply to have a 
corner in his church where they can sit 
and drink in the pure milk of the 
Word; and their only trouble is that 
for the first six months they will not 
be able to pay any seat rent nor to give 
any contribution to the missionary 
funds. 

They Talk of the Days When They 
Were Better Off. 

There were days when they were 
better off, they explain, and then the 
delight of their life was liberality. 
There has been a great family reverse, 
and vague allusions are made to a large 
sum lost either through the misconduct 



Church Folks 135 

of a relative or through the failure of 
a bank, and now they are compelled to 
live most economically. Their straggle, 
the minister is allowed to understand, 
is very keen; but it was not to talk 
about such things again to him, but only 
to assure him of the blessing he had 
been to them, and their anxiety to be 
useful members in his church. If they 
cannot give, they are at least willing to 
work, and generally by an accident 
choose a department of Christian ser- 
vice whose head is rich in this world's 
goods and known to be generous. 

Under the eye of such a chief there 
is no end to the activity of our mendi- 
cant friends. They will offer to do 
anything. They will suggest new 
schemes of philanthropy; they will 
drive the old workers crazy by their 
fussing; and they will go some night, 
at an inconvenient hour, with half a 
dollar, which, it oozes out, they have 
saved for a good cause. As they are 



136 Church Folks 

not able to give to the church funds, 
they make with their own hands some 
preposterous offertory bags, which they 
present formally to the office bearers of 
the church, and which can never be 
shown. 

How They Distribute Their 
Trifling Gifts. 

And as they have no other means of 
proving their gratitude to the minister, 
they call one evening, the man and his 
wife together, who are colleagues in 
mendicancy, and ask him to accept 
a huge muffler, which will protect his 
throat from the winter cold amid his 
innumerable labors, and whose colors 
and construction, if he wore the thing, 
would render him liable to deposition 
from the ministry. Leading members 
of the congregation are faithfully re- 
membered upon their birthdays and at 
Christmas with cards emblazoned with 
pious designs and observations; and if 



Church Folks 137 

a child be stricken with an anxious and 
painful complaint like chicken-pox, the 
inquiries of our mendicant friends are 
regular and touching. They do not like 
to trouble the mother, but they have 
conceived such an affection for the little 
darling, whom they have watched in 
church, that they couldn't rest without 
learning whether the sweet pet had 
passed a quiet day. They do not wish 
to be forward, and they do not forget 
their changed circumstances, but they 
hope it will not be considered an offence 
to have brought just a trifle for the 
angel in her sickness, and they ask the 
mother to convey an unholy-looking 
piece of candy to the little lamb. There 
are mothers and mothers, but the chances 
are that the mother will be considerably 
moved and, on the whole, well pleased 
by this interest in her child, and al- 
though she will put the gift promptly 
in the fire, she will not forget the givers 
at Christmas time. 



138 Church Folks 

When They Have Spun Their Web 
Successfully. 

When the spiders have spun their 
web of delicate filaments, and have 
stretched it from corner to corner of 
the church, it is amazing how many 
flies, not all of them simple, they have 
caught and how much spoil they have 
obtained. The wardrobes of the church, 
both of men and women, are at their 
disposal, and every month you are 
reminded of some old friend when you 
see our mendicant, and it is quite inter- 
esting to trace the " go-to-meeting" 
clothes of the congregation reappearing 
in new circumstances. Their house 
rent is paid, in turn, by a set of good 
Samaritans, each of whom believes that 
he is the only one who has ever been 
allowed to do this kindness, and who 
does it under promise of secrecy, lest 
shrinking natures, poor but proud, 
should be hurt, and that self-respect, 



Church Folks 139 

which is now, as they explain, their 
only possession, should be destroyed. 
Some kindly doctor in the district gives 
his attendance, as is usual with those 
men, without money and without price. 
Medical comfort in the shape of cor- 
dials, jellies, fruit, delicate food, pour 
into the house with such a constant 
stream that it is not wonderful that 
dear little Alice does not recover 
quickly and that the assistance of the 
family has to be called in to use up the 
dainties. 

Later, little Alice, who has been 
taken around, elaborately wrapped up 
and looking most piteous, to thank her 
benefactors in person, and who comes 
on most awkward occasions, has to be 
sent, through sheer pity, for a month 
into the country, and the fond family 
who cannot bear to live without little 
Alice — they never can quite shake off 
the habits of past prosperity — have to 
accompany the convalescent. 



140 Church Folks 

Borrowing From Every One They 
Meet. 

Time would fail me to tell of the 
loans which they obtain from almost 
everybody, rich and poor. Which are 
asked in every case in circumstances of 
the last extremity and with a perfect 
agony of shame; which is the first 
money ever borrowed by the family, 
and is to be repaid in the course of 
fourteen days exactly; for which secu- 
rity is offered in the shape of an 
ancient gold brooch — the last heirloom 
of the family. It is only after the 
long raid has ended, and the mendi- 
cants have departed to another West 
End church at a safe distance, that peo- 
ple begin to compare notes and add up 
accounts, when it is discovered that at 
the lowest estimate the family have 
lived upon the congregation at the rate 
of $1000 a year. 

This calculation is, of course, ex- 



Church Folks 141 

elusive of what they earn for them- 
selves; but, as a rule, this would not 
swell the balance. If any form of work 
be suggested to the female mendicant 
in reduced circumstances, she struggles 
with her emotions, but cannot conceal 
the fact that she is very much hurt. It 
may be foolish, she explains amid her 
tears, but her poor father, who has 
generally been in the army, had often 
said that no daughter of his name 
should ever come to work, and she feels 
it due to his memory to sustain this 
noble attitude, and one is so much 
ashamed at his brutal suggestion that 
he willingly pays an indemnity. 

When the Mendicant is a Trades- 
Man. 

It is of no use attempting to get a 
situation for a young fellow of this 
tribe, since either the place you get for 
him does not suit his peculiar ability, or 



142 Church Folks 

after he has been there for three days 
there is a difference between him and 
the manager of the office, which shows 
that the manager has not been accus- 
tomed to deal with gentlemen; and, of 
course, as the young man's mother tells 
you, her son could not forget the history 
of the family. 

If the mendicant be a tradesman, 
and you send him customers, for which, 
indeed, he has been touting, the things 
are so badly made that no one can wear 
them, and the price is so high that no 
one is inclined to pay it; and then 
the tradesman generally belongs to that 
high and mighty class which will not 
condescend to make anything except in 
the good old-fashioned way; and espe- 
cially will not, even at the point of 
starvation, lower the price. As a matter 
of fact — naked fact — this high-spirited 
tradesman does not want to work so 
long as silly people will support him. 



Church Folks 143 

When the Minister's Eyes are 
Opened. 

By and by even the kindliest of 
ministers, with the growth of intelli- 
gence in the Christian church, will see 
through this class, and will promptly 
subject them to a shrewd labor test, 
declining to mix up together piety and 
beggary, and refusing to believe that 
anybody has ever got any good from 
his ministry who will not work for his 
living. One also expects that a con- 
gregation of Christian people, the most 
credulous body on earth, will pluck up 
courage and at the same time rally their 
common-sense and refuse to make the 
Christian society a dumping-ground for 
genteel tramps, and the " Weary Will- 
iams" of religion will have to find out 
some new way of evading the law that 
if a man will not work, neither shall 
he eat. 



i 4 4 



Church Folks 



And the money which has been saved 
from these parasites might go to swell 
the fund for the comfortable support 
of retired ministers. 



IX. 

Is the Minister an Idler ? 

No man has more reason to be grate- 
ful to his public than a minister, for I 
know no servant who is more .kindly 
treated. While there are, no doubt, in 
so large a body as the Christian Church 
censorious hearers and ill-mannered 
congregations, just as there are lazy and 
cantankerous ministers, yet the average 
congregation is charitable in its judg- 
ment of its minister, patient under his 
failings, keenly appreciative of any 
good work he does, and most responsive 
to all his good offices. There are not 
many substantial complaints which a 



146 Church Folks 

sane-minded and good-tempered minis- 
ter can bring against the average con- 
gregation, but he has sometimes a 
grudge against his friends which he 
does not express, but which often 
rankles in his heart. It is not anything 
they say nor anything they do; it is 
the quiet and perhaps unconscious 
assumption on their part that he has 
not enough work to do or that he has 
a considerable quantity of time at his 
disposal. 

Were he to depend upon their words, 
then this suspicion would never cross 
his mind, because they have a trick, 
and a kindly one, of saying to him on 
Monday that he must be very tired 
after preaching two such wonderful 
sermons, and he, being only human, is 
apt then to imagine that he is exhausted 
after such an intellectual output. At 
other times they remonstrate with him 
in a casual way, after the talk about 
the weather, because he has been over- 



Church Folks 



H7 



working, and tell him that they cannot 
imagine how he is able to do so much. 
All this is friendly and comforting, and 
the minister has an agreeable sense 
that his work is appreciated, and that 
he is one of the austere toilers of the 
world. 

The Minister's Time is Not Con- 
sidered. 



As he grows older, however, and 
begins to attach more importance to the 
attitude of a person's mind than the 
irresponsible words which fall from his 
lips, he has an uneasy sense that people 
are not so very much impressed by his 
exacting labors and his crowded hours. 
Delightful ladies, and all ladies are 
delightful, invite him to afternoon tea 
and such like functions, where he will 
be the only gentleman present; or if 
there be another, he will be an elderly 
man, long retired from business. 



148 Church Folks 

While the minister thanks the lady 
for her thought of him, it comes to his 
mind that her own husband will not be 
at the pleasant little party nor her own 
sons, because they are too busy, and she 
would not dream of asking a barrister 
or a merchant or a doctor or a journal- 
ist, unless it were some great affair to 
which all society was going. It would 
seem to her absurd to take a busy man 
away from his work, even to spend an 
hour with her and other equally charm- 
ing women. The other men would not 
come because they could not. They 
must do their work. The minister is 
invited because, as his hostess assumes, 
he has no work to prevent his coming. 
And she would be apt to consider him 
somewhat less than courteous, and cer- 
tainly not obliging, if he refused; and 
if he did so on account of his time 
being occupied, even her charity might 
fail her, and she might allow herself to 
think that he had some other reason. 



Church Folks 149 

Was he not sitting in his study ? Why 
might he not as well be in her house? 
And she would never understand it 
was his only chance that afternoon of 
mastering a necessary book. Had he 
not passed her house half an hour 
before, and if he could go out for 
a walk, why might he not have spent 
the time in her garden, and he cannot 
explain to her that he was going to 
visit a case of sickness. 

Secretaries of philanthropic societies 
will ask him to go down from a distant 
suburb to the heart of the city, and 
second a resolution at a public meeting 
of eight elderly gentlemen and ceventy- 
seven females of uncertain age, to- 
gether with four genteel mendicants 
who have come to see whether they can 
borrow five shillings from some good 
Samaritan. 



*s° 



Church Folks 



Faddists of All Sorts Harass the 
Minister. 

It was an excellent society, and it 
was necessary its committee should be 
re-elected, and the minister said so at 
the length of ten minutes, but the bitter 
question was in his heart as he went 
home, tired and fretted: Was this the 
best use he could make of his time, 
and would the secretary, indefatigable 
though he was and full of push, have 
asked a business man — that is, a man 
really busy — to have left his office in 
the heat of the work and spend three 
hours of his time in going out to a 
suburb and saying what was of no im- 
portance to people on whom it would 
have no special effect ? The minister 
knows, and the secretary knows, and 
everybody knows that the business man 
would have said no in the shortest form 
of words, and no person would have 
been indignant that he should say so, 



Church Folks 151 

and every person would have held him 
to be a foolish man if he had gone. 

Such an expenditure of time is 
impossible except for superannuated 
gentlemen and for ministers. And, of 
course, if ministers are simply fiddling 
away their time in the house reading 
magazines or looking out at the win- 
dows, or if they are only gadding 
around their districts paying compli- 
mentary calls and talking about the 
weather, it would be a good thing, if 
only for a change, that they should 
spend an afternoon going and coming 
to a meeting and convincing the audi- 
ence that they ought to re-elect the 
committee. 

Faddists of every description drop 
into a minister's study, preferring the 
forenoon, because they are sure to find 
him at home, and explain to him at 
enormous length that we are the descend- 
ants of the lost ten tribes; that moral 
evils would be largely done away with 



J 5 2 



Church Folks 



if we ate carrots instead of meat; that 
the work carried on by some person 
whose name the minister can't pro- 
nounce, at a place in Asia Minor of 
which he never heard, and on the sole 
responsibility of the man who draws 
the salary in Asia Minor, is the most 
important in the range of foreign mis- 
sions. Were any one of these voluble 
people, and they are only three out of a 
hundred, each with a bee in his bonnet, 
to visit a merchant's office, he would not 
likely be allowed into the principal's 
room, and if he were, he would soon 
again be in the outer office. 

The effrontery of a faddist is amaz- 
ing, but it has limits ; and after a little 
experience the faddist leaves the mer- 
chant alone, and, as a rule, he does not 
even attempt the doctor, but he settles 
down as by an instinct and with a feel- 
ing of being at home in the minister's 
study. If the minister be a really good 
man, the faddist enjoys himself very 



Church Folks 1 5 3 

much, for he has got a helpless victim ; 
but if the minister be an imperfectly 
sanctified man, then the faddist goes to 
the door almost as quickly as from the 
merchant's room, but the minister 
knows that his life is in the power of 
the faddist's tongue. 

Ministers Have Little Time for 
Themselves. 

What annoys the minister, and all 
the more so that he cannot express his 
annoyance, is that all those people 
believe that he does not really know 
what to do with his time, and that it is 
at every person's disposal. As a matter 
of fact, the conscientious minister of 
a city church works harder than any 
person in the community, except a 
doctor in general practice, a journalist 
on a daily paper, and a seamstress 
under the sweater's lash. He may sit 
as late as he please at night — and, 
indeed, must sit till, say, midnight at 



154 Church Folks 

least — in order to keep up with his 
reading, but he must be up early in the 
morning, because a business man will 
come in to see him before nine o'clock, 
and by that time he must have opened 
his first mail, which will amoimt to 
about twelve letters, and if he thinks 
it necessary — and in a city it is neces- 
sary — must have gathered at a glance 
what happened yesterday in his com- 
munity and in the world. From nine 
to one he is at work preparing for the 
pulpit, for week-night services, for 
classes, and for miscellaneous church 
and public work, as hard as he can, and 
the hour which he loses through callers 
has to be made up with interest late at 
night. He allows himself some food 
at one o'clock, although very often he 
has to take it cold, because some in- 
genious beggar knows that is the best 
time to find him, and in the height of 
the season he grudges the loss of his 
meal-time, and longs for the day when 



Church Folks 155 

American invention, fertile in ideas 
and parsimonious of time, will invent 
a liquid food which he can take in from 
a pipe while he is studying. 



When He Returns Home After a 
Busy Day. 

If he has not promised to second the 
appointment of a committee of forty 
members to manage a home for twenty 
girls, then he spends the time from 
about two to six visiting people who are 
sick, or who have lost friends, or who are 
in religious anxiety, or who are suffering 
worldly loss, or who have just come to 
his church, or who are just leaving his 
church, or whom he wishes to enlist 
for work, or whom he has not seen for 
some time and desires to keep in touch 
with. He returns home in the evening, 
not because his work is done, because 
this kind of work is never done and 
never can be done, even if he began at 



156 Church Folks 

nine in the morning and continued till 
nine at night, but because no man can 
stand more than five hours of visiting. 

Upon his return — and I confess this 
frankly — the minister allows himself 
a little more food, but again it has to 
be kept for him, because another visitor 
who has missed him in the afternoon 
discovers from a guileless waitress, who 
has just come to the minister's house 
and has not yet learned the duties of 
a minister's servant, the hour at which 
the unfortunate man will get his next 
meal, and has been waiting for half an 
hour to ask the help of the minister for 
a cause which in two cases out of three 
is a mere excrescence upon philan- 
thropy, and a cause with which the 
minister has not the remotest connec- 
tion. 

People who do not .know might sup- 
pose that after the minister had taken 
his very modest meal he would be at 
liberty to sit with his wife and children 



Church Folks 157 

in the family room and discharge one 
of his duties as the head of the house- 
hold as well as to enjoy the sweetest 
pleasure of the day. It is a rare thing 
that this unfortunate man has an even- 
ing to himself, because immediately 
after dinner he has to go to a service 
or to a meeting at his church, and while 
the members of the congregation dis- 
tribute themselves among the different 
evenings, which is quite right, he must 
be present at everything, or if he is not, 
then that from which he is absent begins 
to fail. 

When He Hoped foe an Evening to 
Himself. 

If he has an evening to spare, then 
some member of his congregation will 
ask him to come to a meeting on behalf 
of something or other in which he is 
interested, and there are reasons why 
the minister cannot refuse. Likely as 
not that very gentleman had been saying 



158 Church Folks 

last week that the minister was over- 
worked and must not make so many 
engagements, but when the time comes 
that he has an axe of his own to grind 
he will not have the slightest hesitation 
in asking the minister to turn the 
grindstone. And indeed the public 
work of the minister is much increased 
by his own people, who give the secre- 
taries and the faddists and the rest of 
the brigands letters of introduction 
which conclude, " I hope you will grant 
Mr. Tootle's request as a personal favor 
to myself." The same gentleman may 
only do this once in six months, but 
then a hundred other people in the 
church will do the same at intervals, 
and so the minister is sold into bondage 
by those of his own household. 

Why He Seldom Has an Evening to 
Himself. 

Were I a layman, and some paid 
secretary who has nothing else to do — 



Church Folks 159 

as it sometimes appears to me — except 
to write unnecessary letters and get up 
wearisome meetings and harass minis- 
ters, came to me and asked me to tease 
my minister into leaving his own work 
and attending the secretary's meeting, 
I would express my mind to the secre- 
tary in the language which might be 
given me in that hour by a kindly 
Providence, and one minister at least 
would be saved from the secretary. If 
the religious public has ever any mis- 
giving about the money which is spent 
on secretaries, and the usefulness of 
their work, it may be some consolation 
for that public to know that as long as 
there are paid secretaries for philan- 
thropic societies, no city minister will 
ever be allowed to idle awav his time, 
either in reading modern theology or in 
talking with his family. 

Suppose, however, that by some 
extraordinary mercy the minister has 
an evening to himself, actually to him- 



160 Church Folks 

self — which will come about six times 
in the winter season — and he proposes 
to read aloud to his wife, or that she 
should give him a little music, or that 
the family should look over some art 
books together, or — for I am not hiding 
his little weaknesses — that they should 
play a game together, his wife, his 
children, and himself. The bell rings, 
and the minister looks at his wife; he 
knows what that means. It is at such 
moments that his belief in a personal 
devil, whose ingenuity is in keeping 
with his malignancy, is firmly estab- 
lished. 

Neither His Time Nor His Privacy 
Respected. 

It is not that the caller would natu- 
rally suggest Satan to a stranger, for 
he is simply a respectable, not very 
brilliant, citizen, belonging to the min- 
ister's congregation or perhaps to some 
other minister's congregation, who 



Church Folks 1 6 1 

might have called at some other hour, 
and would have called at another time 
if he had wished to see a merchant, but 
who breaks in upon the minister's 
privacy with the vague idea in his mind 
that as the minister had all the day to 
himself, his evening hours are at the 
mercy of the public. As regards the 
visitor's errand, he might as well have 
written, but he felt it would be better 
discussed at a personal interview — fif- 
teen minutes would give ample op- 
portunity. As it is, this garrulous 
gentleman sits down for the evening in 
the minister's study, and when he goes, 
full of regret for having occupied so 
much of the minister's time, the chil- 
dren have gone to bed and the minister's 
wife is sitting lonely in the empty 
drawing-room. 

There is no other man who suffers 
after this fashion, not even a doctor, for 
people do not saunter in and sit in his 
consulting-room when they ought to be 



1 62 Church Folks 

with their families, and he wishes to be 
with his. Doctors have a hard life, for 
they are liable to be called out at any 
hour and to be worked from morning 
till night, but they are at least pro- 
tected from casual visits and twaddling 
conversation by the simple fact that if 
a man comes to their consulting-room, 
he is not allowed to stay longer than 
fifteen minutes, and he has to pay for 
the time he stays. Of course, a minister 
is at the service of his congregation at 
all reasonable hours, and at any hour 
he is ready for the service of the 
dying and bereaved; but if every 
stranger w r ho has no claim upon him, 
and who comes to him about his own 
affairs, had to pay a reasonable fee, and 
this fee were doubled if he came in the 
evening, then a minister's children 
might come to know their father and 
a minister's wife would not have to 
complain that she saw hardly anything 
of her husband. 



Church Folks 163 

Ministers Need Time to Eest and 
Think. 

When a merchant leaves his office 
and goes to his home he would be 
astounded if a cotton broker called and 
proposed to do business. A working- 
man has rest in his own home, but a 
minister's home is a thoroughfare along 
which all kinds of people travel. Why 
should not a minister's home be as 
sacred as that of a merchant ? Why 
should he not have his periods of daily 
rest as much as the barrister? When 
will it be understood by congregations 
and by the public that if a man is to 
keep abreast with the thought of the 
day, and master the best thought of 
the past, if he is to discharge aright 
his pastoral duties and take his proper 
part in the greater movements of the 
commonwealth, his 'time must be 
guarded from intrusion and his ener- 
gies gathered in from the dissipation 



1 64 Church Folks 

of petty meetings ? When will people 
understand that his work is as serious 
and as exacting as that of any other 
professional man, and that while his 
time belongs unto his Master, as well 
as his talents and everything he pos- 
sesses, it does not belong to paid officials 
and garrulous callers ? When that is 
clearly understood, then it will dawn 
for the first time on certain minds that 
while the minister has many functions 
to perform, one of them is not to be the 
substitute in society for busy men or 
a talking machine at second-rate relig- 
ious meetings. 



X. 

The Minister and His Vacation. 

There is no wholesome and sensible 
minister who does not wish to have the 
good will of every class in his congrega- 
tion, but he especially covets the respect 
and confidence of the young men. This 
is not because they are wiser than their 
elders nor because they are more spirit- 
ual, but because they are unconventional 
and sincere to the last degree. 

A woman, on account of her goodness 
and reverence, will respect a minister 
because of his office ; a young man will 
only respect him because of himself. 
If the minister be unreal, shifty, cow- 
ardly, or lazy, then although he had 



1 66 Church Folks 

been ordained twelve times and is as 
eloquent as Apollos and has a melting 
pulpit voice and a charming private 
manner, young men will see through him 
and despise him and have nothing to do 
with him, and will refuse to go to church 
on his account, while, on the other hand, 
although the minister be not very clever 
and cannot preach deep sermons and 
has a habit of talking plainly and does 
not know many religious parlor tricks, 
if he be straight and hard working and 
fearless in thought as well as deed, they 
will go to hear what he has to say and 
will stand up for him when his back is 
turned and will drop in to see him in 
his study and will consult him when 
they have got into a scrape. They are 
not judges of sanctity, and are apt to 
depreciate really good men because they 
are sometimes weakly and effeminate, 
but they are infallible judges of manli- 
less, and, above all things, they believe 
in a manly minister. They do not ask 



Church Folks 167 

that he should play games, for he may 
be growing old or he may be crippled in 
body, but they do ask that he play the 
game of life bravely and honorably. 

The true minister is perfectly satis- 
fied to be judged by the young men's 
standard — how he plays the big game 
— but he is sometimes concerned be- 
cause young men think that at one point 
he has a special advantage, and he is 
the last man to desire favors on the 
field. He does not want to be shielded 
from criticism nor to be given into on 
account of his position nor to be petted 
in any fashion, but to do his work and 
take his chances and suffer his reverses 
and fight his battle like any other man. 
And, therefore, the minister is justly 
sensitive about one subject of criticism, 
and that is his holidays. 

Last summer, let us suppose, he was 
spending the month of August in the 
country, doing nothing worth mention- 
ing, except walk and climb and fish and 



1 68 Church Folks 

golf and drive and ride and fifty other 
things he did when he was a boy. He 
had earned his holiday by eleven 
months' preaching, teaching, studying, 
presiding, advising, comforting, rebuk- 
ing, visiting, organizing, and fifty other 
things he never thought he would ever 
come to do when he was a boy. His 
conscience was quite at ease at the close 
of the day, though he had not written 
a word, because there was no sermon to 
preach on Sunday; and though he had 
not visited a person, because there was 
not a person to visit, and he congratu- 
lated himself because through the 
length of the long idle days he was gath- 
ering strength of body and reviving his 
mind for his winter's work. 



A Visitor Who Was Warmly 
Welcomed. 

One evening a bicycle came along the 
lonely road at full pace and pulled up 



Church Folks 169 

at the gate, and through the garden 
came a rider, tslad in light undress, 
bareheaded, his face burned to a choco- 
late color, covered with dust, pleasantly- 
tired with his spin of forty miles, but 
full of health and strength and glad- 
ness. He challenged the minister to 
tell the truth as between man and man 
whether he knew him. 

Knew him! Upon the whole, and 
making a virtue of truthfulness, the 
minister admitted that he did, for this 
was the young fellow who sat at the end 
of the front seat in the transept on 
Sunday mornings, and on Sunday even- 
ings kept order in an East End school 
for boys, and was always ready to look 
after some other young fellow, and was 
as good a sort of man as could be made. 

He was taken with triumph and 
shouting into the cottage, and after a 
wash and a stupendous meal the minis- 
ter and he wandered along the hillside 
and talked about many things, and came 



1 70 Church Folks 

back and sat in the garden amid the 
smell of the flowers, till they could no 
longer speak for sleep. In the morning 
they climbed the hill behind and viewed 
the country, and then the young man 
went on his way, and at the corner of 
the road he said farewell ; and as he did 
so he mournfully shook his head, for he 
was making for the nearest railway sta- 
tion, and the next day he would be hard 
at work in the hot city. " My last day," 
he said to the minister as they parted, 
" and it has been a jolly one," and al- 
though the young man did not grudge 
the minister the extra fortnight he was 
going to have, the minister could not 
help feeling that they had not parted on 
equal terms, but that he was thought to 
have the best of it. 

Counting Up the Vacation Days. 

When that happy summer day had 
become only a pleasant memory and 



Church Folks 1 7 1 

winter held the land, the two were sit- 
ting together again in the minister's 
study — this time before the blazing logs. 
They were talking of many things — 
among others that garden with its 
wealth of carnations — and the minister 
charged the young man with his secret 
thought, and declared that he believed 
every young man had the same idea in 
the background of his mind. It was 
agreed to have a debate there and then, 
and the minister undertook to prove 
that he had fewer holidays than a clerk 
in an office, and that not for the sake of 
arguing a ridiculous position, but be- 
cause he believed it to be the truth. 
The young man was delighted to take 
the opposite side. 

It was indeed a simple question of 
arithmetic to put two sets of figures 
down upon a sheet of paper and sub- 
tract the lesser from the greater num- 
ber; the balance left would decide the 
debate. 



172 Church Folks 

As the minister had a city parish and 
a considerate congregation, he was more 
generously treated than many of his 
brethren, and was allowed in the course 
of the year a six weeks' holiday, which 
he divided into a month at the close of 
summer, and a fortnight in the spring- 
time, when the heavy work of winter 
had been finished. And this made 
forty-two days. Between January and 
December he very occasionally had a 
day in the country outside holiday 
times, or half a day in the city, wherein 
he followed his own pleasure. The 
country day very often meant golf, and 
the city half-day, hunting through a 
library and prowling among the book- 
shops. Let such odds and ends be set 
down in all at eight days, and the min- 
ister's vacation amounted to fifty days. 






Church Folks 173 

When the Total was Wkitten 
Down. 

When the minister himself wrote 
down the total his opponent felt that it 
was hardly worth stating his case. As 
the minister insisted and furnished the 
young man with a sheet of paper and a 
pencil the debate seemed to grow into a 
comedy. 

" Twelve days is the rule in our of- 
fice, and one is lucky if he gets away in 
August, for he may be put off with 
April/' said the young man. And he 
was already deducting twelve from fifty 
and wondering what the minister would 
say to a majority of thirty-eight. 

" Does your furlough," questioned 
the minister, " include Sundays in the 
twelve days ? " The young man ad- 
mitted it did not. And so the figure 
twelve was changed to fourteen, but that 
did not make any great difference. 

" Is your office open on Christmas 



1 74 Church Folks 

Day ? " continued the minister. " I 
think not ; nor on New Year's Day, nor 
Easter Monday, nor Whit Monday. By 
the way, unless I am mistaken you 
have the day after Christmas, too, and 
another day at Easter time. We are 
coming along nicely; that makes six 
days you had not reckoned, and then 
there is a bank holiday about the begin- 
ning of August, which you avoid when 
you are arranging your yearly holiday. 
Where are we now ? Twenty-one days, 
I declare — three weeks. It is little 
enough for a man who works so hard, 
but it is better than you had reckoned." 

" Yes, it reduces your majority, but 
it still stands at a respectable figure — 
twenty-nine days more to the minister 
than to the clerk." 

" Perhaps," replied the minister, 
"but what a shameful thing it is that 
your firm, which has such a good name 
and does such a large business, should 
work their clerks the whole of Saturday 



Church Folks 175 

instead of giving them a good half holi- 
day. Nothing, I should say, would be 
more pleasant for a young fellow than 
to be able to take a run into the country 
on his bicycle on Saturday afternoon, 
when the flowers are just beginning to 
come out and the hedgerows have their 
first green, or to have four hours' skat- 
ing through clear, clean, bracing winter 
air. I pity you," said the minister 
with sympathy, " not having the Satur- 
day half holiday. You are as badly off 
as I am myself, to whom Saturday is 

the second hardest day of the week." 

« 

When the Minister Envies the 
Layman. 

The minister arose and threw another 
log upon the fire, for he was a generous 
man and also had some sense of humor, 
and did not wish to put his friend to 
confusion. 

" Never thought of that," said the 



176 Church Folks 

young man ingenuously ; " it is quite 
true. I remember pitying you one day 
when I was going to skate and came in 
to see whether you would go with me, 
and found you grinding at your second 
sermon." 

" Well," said the minister, " half a 
day for fifty-two weeks comes to twenty- 
six whole days, and deducting the two 
half holidays counted into your regular 
vacation, that leaves twenty-five days to 
be added to the twenty-one, which 
makes forty-six, unless my poor head is 
wrong in the addition. 

" Oh ! n said the minister, " I am 
right, am I ? You stand now forty-six 
against my fifty. I must congratulate 
you upon your minority. No minister 
complains of his work, not even of the 
push and anxiety of Saturday, but I tell 
you honestly, Dick, there are times 
when he envies a layman his Sunday, 
for the Sunday is the layman's day of 
rest and the minister's day of toil. On 




Church Folks i yy 

that day most people have a little longer 
sleep in the morning — though very like- 
ly you rise at five o'clock on Sunday 
morning to study Hebrew — and then 
they have a leisurely breakfast — for why 
should they hurry, it is not a working 
day ? Between breakfast and church 
time they talk about all kinds of things 
and turn over books and read letters 
that have come from abroad, and have 
the sense of being at their ease. If it 
be fair weather they take the longest 
road to church, walking through a gar- 
den or a park, and they saunter church- 
ward with unembarrassed minds. The 
father sits with his family in their pew 
and can give his mind to the worship 
without distraction and without fear. 
Perhaps he never thinks about the min- 
ister's wife, who sits like a widow in 
her pew with her children as orphans, 
for the head of her household is that 
day on his hardest duty, and has so 
much to do in leading other people's 



178 Church Folks 

worship that he can hardly be said to 
have rest enough of mind to worship 
himself. Please don't interrupt/' for 
the young man was beginning to ask 
terms of surrender. 

Once the Minister Had a Sunday 
to Himself. 

" Do you know/' said the minister 
as he looked into the dancing firelight, 
" that some years ago I had a Sunday 
to myself with my family, and I can 
still taste its sweetness. We started 
discussions on Bible characters and 
religious subjects after breakfast, and 
I found out for the first time what my 
boys were thinking about. We hunted 
up books which had been mentioned, 
and I read favorite passages from the 
poets and showed rare editions and bits 
of binding which I kept locked up from 
the light and dust. We gossiped, we 
loitered, we hung over treasures. We 



Church Folks 1 79 

took tea in the garden, we talked of old 
days, we made plans for the future. 
Why, I walked with my family to 
church, with no weight on my mind 
and no reason for hurry. So keenly did 
I enjoy the day that I resolved to taste 
it to the last drop. 

" Do you think I went into the vestry 
before service because it was my vestry, 
and instructed the minister about the 
notices because it was my church ? Cer- 
tainly not. I went in through the 
front door, like any other member of 
the congregation, and nodded affably to 
the officials as I passed. I walked up 
the aisle behind my family and sat at 
the end of my pew like any other head 
of a household. After service I did go 
to the vestry, and having been admitted, 
thanked the preacher for his sermon as 
one of his hearers, and then went home 
talking about the service with my boys, 
for it was another man's sermon and I 
could enlarge upon its good points. 



180 Church Folks 

That afternoon, having time at my dis- 
posal, I visited a hall downtown where 
a man with a gift of his own was teach- 
ing two hundred unskilled laborers the 
elements of religion, and came home 
mightily refreshed, and then we read 
again and talked, and my family and 
I became almost intimate, because we 
had leisure and it was Sunday. 

" At evening service I had the pleas- 
ure of picking up a young man at the 
door who was waiting for a seat, and 
taking him to my pew, and explaining 
to him that he might always have that 
seat in the evening, and that I was glad 
he had come, as we were going to have 
a good sermon. He looked curiously at 
me, and was about to say something 
when I anticipated him and explained 
that I was not the minister of the 
church that day, but simply a hearer 
like himself. I had more talk with my 
family after service — the pleasant ram- 
bling but not unprofitable conversation 



Church Folks 181 

of people who were not tired nor over- 
strung, and so the day of rest closed in 
.kindly fellowship and inward peace. 
We must all make sacrifices, Dick, but 
the hardest one that a minister has to 
make is his Sunday, for it is to the 
injury of his own soul and also of his 
family. Be thankful for your quiet 
Sundays and guard them jealously for 
the rest of mind and body." 

" You have proved your case," said 
Dick ; " adding fifty Sundays and 
twenty-five half Saturdays, I make my 
vacation ninety-six days against your 
fifty." 

There is No End to the Church 
Work. 

" It is mean," said the minister, " to 
triumph over a beaten foe, especially 
when he is such a good fellow, but 
figures cannot quite represent the case, 
because there is the question of the 



1 8 2 Church Folks 

different kind of work done, say, in an 
office and in a study. I know that 
business is exacting, that it means a 
steady grind, and that it is full of sur- 
prises and disappointments and the 
chance of great reverses, but the busi- 
ness man has his own advantages. For 
one thing, there is a limit to his work, 
and when he comes home in the evening 
he leaves his work behind him. But 
there is no limit whatever to the minis- 
ter's work. It is ever hanging over 
him, ever distracting his thoughts, ever 
exasperating his nerves, ever reproach- 
ing his conscience. When he allows 
himself a social evening, he does not 
meet with the other guests on equal 
terms, because they have written their 
last letter and discharged their last 
duty for the day, and when they go 
home it will be to finish the last chapter 
of a pleasant book and go to bed ; but he 
tore himself away from half-finished 
work, and when his friends are sleeping 



Church Folks 183 

the light will be burning on his desk, 
Besides — and, Dick, you cannot imagine 
what this means — the merchant .knows 
that he can do so much work in eight 
hours, because he is dealing with affairs ; 
but the minister never knows what he 
can do, because he is dealing with ideas. 
It is the necessity of production, even 
when the mind will not produce, which 
grates upon the nerves of a minister 
and is apt to break down his health. 

" The journalist writes every day, 
but he has something new to write 
about ; the literary man writes when he 
is inclined; the minister has to write 
on an old subject — although the great- 
est which can engage the mind — and he 
has to write whether his mind is bright 
or dull. Possibly no man has moments 
of such joy — when he is inspired; cer- 
tainly no man has such hours of depres- 
sion — when he has fallen beneath his 
subject. It is only by patient reading 
and unceasing prayer that he can 



1 84 Church Folks 

accomplish his duty, and then he is ever 
strained to the utmost, and never knows 
the rest of the man who does his work 
with time and strength and ideas to 
spare. When the minister in active 
service lies down to die he will be 
giving directions in his last conscious 
moments about a letter that had not 
been answered, and sending explana- 
tions to a family that has not been 
visited, and when his mind begins to 
wander, it will be among texts with 
which he has struggled and efforts 
which he has made in vain." 

Longer Vacations Should be the 
Exile. 

" He ought to have two months every 
year," cried Dick, " and when I am 
a deacon I'll see that my minister has 
a six months' holiday in addition every 
seven years, in order that he may begin 
again as a new man in mind and body." 




Church Folks 185 

" You are a good fellow, Dick, and 
you're wise for your years, and if the 
Church treated her ministers after this 
fashion she would reap all the gain. 
For every new idea which comes to the 
minister's mind, and every new book 
he reads, and every new sight he sees, 
and every new gallery he visits during 
his holidays pass into his words and 
into his life, and the thoughtfulness 
and generosity of congregations would 
come back to their own souls with usury 
of reward." 



XL 

The Eevival of a Minister. 

It was not that the minister had be- 
come too old, for he was still in the 
prime of life; or that his health had 
failed, for he was stronger than in the 
days of his youth ; or that he had ceased 
to study, for he was a harder reader 
than ever; or that he had lost touch 
with the age, for he was essentially a 
modern thinker. It was not that he 
was less diligent in pastoral work or less 
skilful in organization, nor was it that 
he had quarrelled with his congregation, 
or his congregation with him, nor was 
it that the district had changed or that 
the church had been left without people. 



Church Folks 187 

He preached as well as ever he did, and 
with much more weight and wisdom 
than twenty years ago. There were as 
many members on the roll, and as much 
money raised, and as much work done, 
and the church had as great a reputa- 
tion. It was difficult to lay your finger 
upon anything wanting in minister or 
people, and yet the minister was con- 
scious and the people had a vague sense 
that something was wrong. The spirit 
of the congregation was lower, their dis- 
charge of duty was flatter, their response 
to appeals was slower, their attendance 
at extra services was poorer. There 
was less enthusiasm, less spontaneity, 
less loyalty. After fifteen years of ser- 
vice in the same place, addressing the 
same people, and saying, of necessity, 
the same things, and moving about in 
the same district, the minister, without 
any fault on his part, but simply 
through an infirmity of human nature, 
had grown a little weary. He had lost 



1 88 Church Folks 

freshness, not of thought nor of expres- 
sion, but of spirit; and there was not 
in him now that buoyancy of soul and 
that hopefulness of tone and that per- 
petual joy of speech which once had 
attracted people and won their hearts. 
And, on their part, the people had lost 
freshness toward him; not respect for 
him nor gratitude for his past service 
nor appreciation of his present work, 
but their sense of expectation from him 
and their affectionate delight in him 
and their joy in speaking about 
him. Their pulses were not stirred 
when he preached, nor did a visit from 
him make an event, nor would his 
absence make any great blank in their 
lives. There was still an honest affec- 
tion between the minister and his 
people, but it had lost the passion and 
romance of past years. It was now 
undemonstrative and well regulated; 
perhaps a trifle too sober and calm to 
be called affection. 



Church Folks 189 

The people had grown so accustomed 
to their minister, his appearance, his 
voice, his way of thinking, his tricks 
of manner, that they were able to criti- 
cise him and note his faults with much 
accuracy. He did not care to be contra- 
dicted, and was apt to be irritated when 
his plans were opposed ; he was too fond 
of certain lines of thought, and did not 
always preach to edification; he was 
apt to be too much with a few friends, 
and did not hold himself sufficiently at 
the disposal of all; he gave too much 
attention to outside work, and some- 
times neglected his pastoral duty; he 
insisted upon using his leisure time as 
he pleased, and did not seem to remem- 
ber that he ought not to have had any 
leisure time; he was apt to grumble 
when extra duties were put upon him, 
and was not always gracious when asked 
to do more than his own work. Ten 
years ago no one had dared to hint at 
those faults, for he would have been 



190 Church Folks 

torn in pieces by his fellow-members, as 
an evil-minded and unreasonable man. 
The minister was very much then what 
he is now, but his faults then were lost 
in high spirits and earnestness and 
kindly feeling and devotion to spiritual 
duty. He was perfect then in the 
glamour of the morning light ; he is an 
ordinary man now whose imperfections 
are clearly seen in the glare of noonday. 
The minister is also able now to look at 
his people from a distance and to judge 
them with an impartial mind, while 
once they were to him altogether lovely, 
without spot or blemish or any such 
thing, and you might have more safely 
criticised a bride's appearance to her 
bridegroom during the honeymoon than 
have found fault with this man's con- 
gregation. "Whether it be that his eyes 
are clearer or his heart is colder, he is 
under no delusions now; and although 
he would not say such things in public, 
he knows quite well wherein his people 



Church Folks 191 

come short. Some of. them are hope- 
lessly bigoted in their own views, and 
are not open even to the best light, 
which he is apt to think is his own. 
Some of them are so liberal that they 
have hardly any faith, and he forgets 
to remind himself that for their lack of 
faith he is responsible. Some of them 
are so worldly that the highest appeals 
of religion have no effect upon their 
lives, and some of them so ungenerous 
that they will hardly support the best 
of causes. He feels keenly that young 
people whom he trained and loved are 
no longer true to him, but prefer other 
voices, and are as enthusiastic about 
others as once they were about him ; and 
he misses little acts of kindness, which 
are no longer rendered him, and which 
he valued, not for their own value, but 
because they were the sacraments of 
friendship. He still believes his con- 
gregation to be better than any other 
he knows, he still remembers their 



192 Church Folks 

loyalty in years past; but the days of 
first love are over, and his heart is 
sometimes heavy. 

One evening the office bearers of the 
church had been meeting, and when 
the business was done they drifted into 
talk about the church life and about 
their minister. They were, upon the 
whole, a body of honorable, sensible, 
good-hearted, and straightforward men, 
who desired to do their best by their 
minister, and not to vex him in any 
way; who always took care that he had 
a proper salary and a good holiday; 
who would never complain without 
reason, and who would never dream of 
asking any man to resign, and setting 
him adrift after a long service without 
a pension. But they were not satisfied 
with the state of affairs, and after much 
talking up and down, suggesting, hint- 
ing, indicating, qualifying, it was 
almost a relief when Mr. Judkin, their 



Church Folks 193 

chairman, and a strong man in word and 
deed, gave expression to their minds. 
" There is no man/' he said, " I 
respect more thoroughly than our min- 
ister, for he has worked hard and made 
our congregation what it is. He is well 
read and a good preacher, and no one 
can say a word against his life or con- 
duct; but there is no question, and I 
think it is better that it should be said 
instead of being felt in secret, that 
somehow or other our minister is losing 
his hold upon the people, and that the 
congregation is not what it used to be 
in tone and in heart. My impression, 
brethren, is that while it might be a 
risk for us, and very likely we would 
never get any one who could do for us 
what our minister has done in the past, 
that he has finished his work and both 
sides would be better to have a change." 
And when Mr. Judkin looked round he 
saw that he had been understood, and 
was encouraged to continue to the end. 



1 94 Church Folks 

" Our minister has so good a position 
in the church and his reputation is so 
high that he could easily obtain another 
congregation if he wished. In fact, 
I have reason to believe that he has had 
opportunities of making a change, but 
has always refused to entertain the idea. 
There is no man in the congregation 
who would ask the minister to leave — 
certainly I shall not ; but I am not sure 
but that a new beginning would be the 
best thing for the minister, and also, I 
am bound to add, might be a good thing 
for us. One thing I would like to say 
more, and that is about the finance. We 
are not a poor church and we will 
always be able to pay our way, but we 
have a pretty heavy debit balance, and 
there was rather a poor response to the 
last appeal from the pulpit. If the 
congregation were in good heart, the 
necessary $2000 could have been got 
in a week." 

There was a pause, during which 



Church Folks 195 

several brethren conveyed by looks and 
nods to Mr. Judkin that he had ex- 
pressed their mind ; and then the silence 
was broken by Mr. Stonier, who was 
distinguished in the congregation and 
outside of it by extreme parsimony in 
money matters, an entire absence of 
sentiment, and a ghastly frankness of 
speech. It was felt when he took up 
the speaking, that if Mr. Judkin had 
placed the nail in position, Mr. Stonier 
would hammer it in to the head, but vou 
never can tell. " This/' said Mr. 
Stonier, " is a conference, I suppose, 
when any man can say anything he 
pleases, and there are no rules of order. 
For myself, I did not know that we were 
going to sit to-night in judgment on the 
minister, and I didn't know that Mr. 
Judkin and the rest of you were going 
to ask him in some roundabout, gentle- 
manly, Christian, high-toned fashion 
to look out for another place. Oh, yes ; 
that is just what you are after, but you 



196 Church Folks 

are such a set of pussy-cats that you 
won't speak out and say what you 
mean! For myself, I've been a seat- 
holder in the church for fifteen years, 
and when I came here the church was 
nearly empty, and now it's quite full, 
and the minister has done fifteen years' 
hard work. Now, I do not set up to be 
a philanthropist, and I never gave a 
penny for the " conversion of the 
Jews," nor to the " Society for Supply- 
ing Free Food to Street Loafers," nor 
to any other of the schemes you gentle- 
men advocate. I am not what is called 
a large giver, but I hope I'm an honest 
man ; and I tell you that if I had a man 
in my office who had served me fifteen 
years and done his work well, and I 
proposed to get rid of him because I 
was tired seeing the same man always 
at his desk and the same writing in the 
ledger, I should consider myself a 
scamp; and I thank God I never have 
done such a thing with any of my staff. 



Church Folks 197 

If you can find any man who has been 
in my office and been dismissed because 
I wanted to see a new face, then I'll give 
$100 to Timbuctoo or any other mission 
you like/' No one expected to earn the 
prize, for it was well known that al- 
though Mr. Stonier was as hard as 
nails to miscellaneous charity, he was 
an excellent master in his own office. 

" As regards the deficit in the church 
funds, if that is the ground on which 
the minister is going to be dismissed, 
I'm prepared to pay the whole sum 
myself; and I do it, mark you, as a 
token of respect and gratitude — grati- 
tude, see you, gentlemen, for fifteen 
years' honest work." No sooner had 
this outspoken man sat down than Mr. 
Love joy, the kindest and sweetest soul 
in all the congregation, who had been 
very restless for some time, ventured 
on speech. 

" I do not wish to argue with my dear 
brethren who have spoken, for Brother 



198 Church Folks 

Judkin is too strong for me, and no 
person could reply to Brother Stonier 
with his handsome offer. Most gener- 
ous, and just like his kind heart, of 
which I have had experience for many 
years in my little charities; but that's 
a secret between Brother Stonier and 
me. What I want to say is that I love 
our minister for what he is and for what 
he was to me in the time of my great 
sorrow. When ... I lost my beloved 
wife he brought the Lord's consolation 
day by day to my heart, and our pulpit 
will never be the same to me without 
our minister." And that was all that 
Mr. Love joy said. 

It seemed, however, to touch a hid- 
den spring in every one present, and 
one after another the office bearers 
spoke. They seemed to have forgotten 
the matter before them and the delicate 
suggestion of Mr. Judkin. One rose 
to say that the minister had married 
him, and he never could forget the 



Church Folks 199 

marriage address; another had lost a 
little lad quite suddenly, and he did not 
think that his wife and he could have 
endured the trial had it not been for the 
minister's sympathy; a third had 
passed through worldly trials, and it 
was the minister's sermon that had kept 
him above water ; and a fourth, who, as 
every one knew, had passed through 
fearful temptation, wished humbly to 
testify that he had not been that night 
an office bearer in a Christian church 
without the minister's help in time of 
trouble. Others looked as if they could 
have spoken, several murmured sympa- 
thy, and one deacon surreptitiously used 
his handkerchief, and at last Mr. Jud- 
kin rose again and proved himself a 
man worthy to lead and to guide a 
church. 

" Brethren," he said, " I expressed 
the feeling that was in my mind, and 
I am thankful that I gave it expression, 
for it has relieved me, and it has done 



200 Church Folks 

good to you. I now withdraw what I 
said : I was a little discouraged. Brother 
Stonier is quite right, and he has braced 
us up ; and if he clears off the deficit, for 
which we are all much obliged, I shall 
be very glad if you allow me, brethren, to 
repaint the church this fall, for the col- 
ors are getting a little faded, and I would 
like to do it as a sign of gratitude for 
what the minister was to my wife when 
our son was hanging between life and 
death." Mr. Judkin's example set the 
office bearers upon a new track, one 
offering to supply the Sunday-school 
with new hymn-books, about which 
there had been some difficulty; another 
declaring that if the mother church was 
going to be repainted, he would see that 
the mission church should also get 
a coat; a third offered to pay the 
quarter of a missionary's salary to take 
the burden off the minister's shoulders, 
and three other office bearers appro- 
priated the remaining quarters, till at 



Church Folks 201 

last there was not a man who had not 
secured the right, personal to himself, 
of doing something, great or small, for 
the church, and every one was to do it 
out of gratitude to the minister for all 
he had been to them and all he had done 
for them during fifteen years. And 
finally Mr. Lovejoy melted all his 
brethren by a prayer, in which he car- 
ried both minister and people to the 
Throne of Grace, and so interceded that 
every one felt as he left the place that 
the blessing of God was resting upon 
him. 

The week-night service was held on 
Wednesday, and, as a rule, was very 
poorly attended. On this week the 
minister had come down to his vestry 
with a low heart, and was praying that 
he might have grace to address Mr. 
Lovejoy and a handful of devout and 
honorable women without showing that 
he was discouraged himself and without 
discouraging them. There were days 



202 Church Folks 

in the past when the service had been 
held in the church, and Mr. Judkin 
used to boast in the city about the at- 
tendance; and then it descended from 
the church to the large hall ; but of late 
the few who attended had been gathered 
into a room, because it was more cheer- 
ful to see a room nearly full than a hall 
three parts empty. The room was next 
door to the vestry, and the minister 
could tell before he went in whether 
the number would rise or fall above the 
average thirty. This evening so many 
feet passed his door, and there was such 
a hum of life, that he concluded there 
would be forty, which was a high at- 
tendance, and he began to reproach him- 
self for cowardice and unbelief. He 
was looking out the hymns when the 
door opened, and Mr. Love joy came in 
with such evident satisfaction upon his 
gracious face that the minister was 
certain some good thing had happened. 
" Excuse me interrupting you," said 



Church Folks 203 

the good man, " but I came to ask 
whether you would mind going into the 
hall to-night ? The room is full already, 
and more are coming every minute. I 
should not wonder to see a hundred, 
perhaps two/' and Mr. Lovejoy beamed 
and quite unconsciously shook hands 
afresh with the minister. 

" You may be sure that I shall be 
only too glad, but . . . what is the 
meaning of this ? Do they know that I 
am preaching myself % " And the min- 
ister seemed anxious lest the people 
should have been brought in the hope 
of hearing some distinguished stranger. 

" Of course, they know, and that is 
why they have come," responded Mr. 
Lovejoy with great glee ; " no other 
person could have brought them, and if 
you didn't preach to-night, it would be 
the greatest disappointment the people 
ever had; but I must hurry off to see 
that everything is right in the hall," 
and in a minute the minister heard the 



204 Church Folks 

sound of many voices as the people 
poured joyfully from the room into the 
hall, and even in the vestry he was con- 
scious of a congregation. As he was 
speculating on the meaning of it all the 
door opened again and Mr. Love joy 
returned. 

" We hadn't faith enough/' he cried ; 
" we ought to have gone to the church 
at once. Brother Stonier said in his 
usual decided way, i No half measures, 
into the church with you;' but I was 
afraid there would not be enough. I 
was wrong, quite wrong, the church will 
be nicely filled from back to front, for 
the people are coming in a steady 
stream — it's just great to see them. I'll 
come back for you when they are all 
seated ; but give them time, it's not easy 
moving from one place to another as 
we've been doing to-night ; but we'll not 
move another Wednesday, we'll just 
settle down in the church as in the 



Church Folks 205 

forme? days," and Mr. Lovejoy left the 
vestry walking on air. 

When the minister went in the 
church was almost full, and he had some 
difficulty in giving out the first hymn, 
for it came upon him that his people 
had seen that he was discouraged and 
that this was a rally of affection. The 
prayer was even harder for him than 
the hymn, although his heart was deeply 
moved in gratitude to God and tender 
intercession for men. And then when 
he came to the address he threw aside 
what he had prepared, for it seemed 
to him too cold and formal, and he read 
the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth 
Psalm slowly and with a trembling 
voice, and instead of commentary, he 
paused between the verses, and the 
people understood. When he read the 
last verse — " He that goeth forth and 
weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall 
doubtless come again with rejoicing, 



206 Church Folks 

bringing his sheaves with him" — he 
hesitated a moment, and then pro- 
nounced the benediction. After a min- 
ute's silent prayer he lifted his head 
and found the people still waiting. Mr. 
Judkin rose, and coming forward to the 
desk, thanked the minister audibly for 
all his work; and then they all came — 
men, women, and children — and each 
in his own way said the same thing; 
and the story went abroad that Eichard 
Stonier, who came last and said nothing, 
had broken down for the first and only 
time in his life. 

THE END. 



OCT 161900 



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